This story is about is how I tried to find the truth about the origins of the Navy, driven by the conviction that if I seek, I shall find. It led to the publication of one (one-and-a-half) book(s). But the writing is a story in itself, which needs to be told.
There was a good naval reason for writing a history of the Navy, which led to two of us (Lt.Cdr. – now Rear Adm. – J. Jayasuriya and I) being assigned the task. We discovered that others had had similar ideas in earlier days. One wasthe first Commanding Officer of the Ceylon Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve who, as the war was ending in 1946, wrote to his officers:
“It is requested that you furnish…a resumé of operations undertaken…together with eye witness accounts…The latter will not be subject to editing…however, excessive ebullitions should, within reason, be restricted.”
Another was a Captain of the Navy of the Royal Ceylon Navy, Rear Adm. Kadirgammar who advised his Chief of Staff, Capt. Hunter, in 1971:
“…What you desire is a historical study and one has to be careful that it does not end as an aimless one. Systemized methodology at the outset is a must…The next is the study and availability and access to old records. No writing should be attempted unless research is completed…one must guard against producing an old boys’ section of a school magazine…”
Eventually, I managed (to my satisfaction, at least) to include both dry facts and warm human memories, (but not “an old boys’ section of a school magazine”).
But I relished the work. Apart from the reasons I give below, I (as many others new to the post-1950 Navy) felt deprived of any knowledge of the pre-Independence Navy – fondly called the “OKAPI Navy” by the old salts – and so I began my researches into that Navy. At the end of that study, I described my reaction to what I had discovered as follows:
“The discovery-of the original CRNVR files was exhilarating. Leafing through those crumbling papers, I found myself engulfed by a mass of detail of day-to-day happenings. The CRNVR ceased to be a collection of somebody else's stories: it became a real-life Navy with all the problems, gripes, frustration, achievements, complaints, criticisms, and appeals: all too familiar to me in my own Navy. The more I delved into the dry facts and the dusty files, the more human the CRNVR became to me. The total picture gradually revealed itself; made me be humble, gave me an ungrudging admiration for the men of the CRNVR; pride in that we were their lineal descendents; and a deep sense of frustration that we had been deprived of all systematic knowledge of this period of the Navy's History.”
I am more than certain that today’s naval personnel know even less about the pre-1983 Navy than we did of the pre-1950 Navy!
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