In “Fair weather and foul” I have not described the book I wrote on the CRNVR as it is an SLN publication. Also, there were no photographs in the book as none were available to me, then, though they were, later. Please refer to www navy.lk for more information.
But I would like to repeat my personal reflections on writing the History, after I had finished writing it. I said:
“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.”
The files were in the Navy’s Record Room in a most deplorable state of preservation. I doubt they are better preserved now. But there were a good many old files from CRNVR days; 95% being very mundane, though revealing. Some letters were gems, and I collected them into a file to be conserved and preserved. Among them was the letter of Adm. Mountbatten to Capt. Beauchamp commending him on his Force. All these were given by me to Adm. Clancy Fernando on the eve of my trip to Australia: with his assassination, all documents handed over him disappeared forever. Anicca. Only the letter I mention remains as the frontispiece of the History, made from a photocopy I had made for myself.