The title comes from the author's maternal grandfather, Lloyd Aswald, a seafarer whose shipmates called him 'Ceylon' because he was usually the only Ceylonese man aboard. The book carries the subtitle heritage is what you make of it.
Somasiri Devendra served as an officer and naval instructor in the Royal Ceylon Navy, and later helped to establish maritime archaeology in Sri Lanka, working as Special Advisor to the Director General of the Department of Archaeology. That double career — a life at sea followed by a life spent studying what the sea has kept — sits behind the writing here.
The volume gathers newspaper articles Devendra wrote over the course of many years. Because of that origin, most chapters stand on their own and can be read in any order, which suits a reader who picks a book up and puts it down rather than working through it front to back. The pieces are written as narrative rather than as academic papers, and Devendra keeps technical language out of the way. Among the chapters is 'The Island of Fate', which returns to the Cocos Island mutiny.
This is a book by a practitioner writing for a general audience rather than for a journal. Readers who come to Sri Lankan history through the coast and the harbours — shipping, naval service, wrecks, the island's long traffic with the sea — will find the subject matter familiar territory handled by someone who worked in it professionally. It will also suit readers interested in how a discipline gets started in a country, since Devendra was present at the beginnings of maritime archaeology in Sri Lanka rather than inheriting an established field.
The tone throughout is personal. A grandfather known to his crewmates by the name of his country is the kind of detail that explains why the author thought the collection worth making, and the subtitle makes the same point more directly: heritage is not simply received, it is something people assemble and look after. Devendra, who has since died, spent a working lifetime doing exactly that.
Published in English by Godage International Publishers, an established Colombo house issuing titles in Sinhala and English. For readers abroad with an interest in Sri Lanka's naval and maritime past, it offers writing of a kind that rarely travels beyond the island's newspaper pages — short, readable chapters by a man who had been to the places he describes.
- Author: Somasiri Devendra
- Publisher: Godage International Publishers
- Language: English
- Pages: 240
- ISBN: 9786240007740
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