Appreciations
View(s):Instructor Commander M. G. S. Perera
Time to recognise services of this teacher to the Navy
It is 15 years since Instructor Commander M.G.S. Perera, the man who trained generations of officers and sailors and, the man who created the Naval and Maritime Academy, left us for ‘the other shore’.
As the last of his Schooleys (the naval term for Instructor Officers) yet around, it is appropriate that I pay a tribute to ‘MGS’, the head of my branch.
The Royal Ceylon Navy was born in Colombo. By the time I joined the Navy (as an Instructor Lieutenant in 1960), ‘MGS’ was awaiting promotion as the ‘first Instructor Lieutenant Commander’ of the Navy. It was one of a series of firsts he achieved in the Navy.
He had started his career as a teacher after qualifying for the “Ceylon Teacher’s Certificate, in English and Sinhala. Teaching at a school in Galle, one of his fellow-teachers was the great maestro Sunil Santha.
‘MGS’ (“Steve” to his friends) had an insatiable urge to learn and this drove him to the then famous Victoria Jubilee Technical Institute (VJTI) in Bombay, where he was awarded the Licentiate in Mechanical Engineering (LME) with Honours in 1947. After two more years studying Machine Design and Practice, he returned home in 1949.
The “Ceylon Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve” (CRNVR) was then expanding, gearing itself to become the “Royal Ceylon Navy” in a few months’ time and MGS enlisted in August 1949. The Navy – a small band of 100 plus Volunteers at this time – had no idea of the value of his qualifications and took him in as only Petty Officer / Stoker Mechanic (P/O-S/M). It was around this time that the Navy acquired its first ship, H.M.Cy.S. Vijaya (ex H.M.S. Flying Fish) and he joined her in Trincomalee as part of the ‘first all-Ceylon crew’, to sail her to Colombo for commissioning.
The Navy soon realised that his expertise was being wasted, and promoted him Engine Room Artificer Class-1 and, not long after, took the unprecedented step of directly commissioning him Instructor Lieutenant in 1952. No one, I think, made it so fast from Petty Officer to Lieutenant. After the mandatory eight years in rank, he was promoted Instructor Lieutenant Commander in April 1960 and later, Instructor Commander in 1964.
I speak of him and his achievements as the last of the Instructor Officers who worked with him. At the beginning, he was the one and only Instructor Officer in our one-ship ‘Navy’. He was given a large room, called the “Royal Ceylon Navy School-Room”, in H.M.Cy.S. Gemunu, where his task was to teach the basics of almost everything to Naval Officer cadets selected for training at Britannia Royal Naval College Dartmouth, England.
As the cadet intakes grew in numbers and frequency, he needed assistants with University degrees. His first assistants were Instructor Lieutenants S. Navaratnaraja and V.W.H. Boteju (to teach Mathematics and Physics) and the officer who introduced Sinhala to the Navy, M.L.Mendis who went on to become the longest serving “Schooley” of all. Further expansion was needed and in 1960 H.D.L.M. Palmon, E.M.A. Perera, T. Mahadeva and I were commissioned.
A proper training establishment for officer cadets – including the first “Gunroom” – and for sailors, was established in Diyatalawa and not long after that, ‘MGS’ was appointed the Commanding Officer of H.M.Cy. Rangalla – the first non-executive branch officer to be appointed to command.
He had only seven of us Instructor Officers on his staff. Rangalla became the ‘first ship’ to be manned entirely by Instructor Officers. It was with this complement that ‘MGS’ established the first Naval Technical Training Centre, to train Artificer Apprentices before they were sent to Indian training schools.
About this time he proceeded to England to specialize in Meteorology at the Royal Naval Air Station H.M.S. Culdrose, becoming the first and perhaps, the only naval officer to qualify as such. He also undertook a study tour of B.R.N.C. Dartmouth and the Engineering Colleges at Manadon, and Plymouth, and H.M.S.S. Sultan, Fisguard, Raleigh, Collingwood and Caledonia.
Following the attempted “coup d’etat” the Navy had to hand over Diyatalawa to the Army in 1963 and move to Kochchikade Colombo, which became the new H.M.Cy.S. Rangalla, again with ‘MGS’ in command.
In 1966, the sun again shone on the Navy and a larger intake of sailors was recruited. The shore establishment at Trincomalee H.M.Cy.S. Tissa, was hastily shifted to a group of under-utilized buildings and the ‘Tissa barracks’ was re-commissioned H.M.Cy.S. Parakrama – II (in memory of the best ship the Navy had, which had been sold off in 1964.)
Back in Kochchikade Colombo, ‘MGS’, with his usual foresight, had already started planning to set-up a proper Naval Academy in Trincomalee. The ‘Naval & Maritime Academy’ was born on January 15, 1967. Here ‘MGS’ found the opportunity for analysis and experiment, creating an environment in which the staff did “brain-storming” sessions where the future of the Navy was discussed, debated and even presentations made to the Prime Minister.
‘MGS’ designed new courses to keep in line with the way the Navy was progressing. Among them were the amalgamation of the old Visual Signalling (V / S ) and Wireless Telegraphy (W / T ) branches into one, called “Communicators”; and the cross-training of seamen and engine room sailors as “Seaman Mechanics” to enable the small number of sailors that the small Patrol Craft (that were all we had as a fleet, then) could be equally at home on deck and in the engine-room. All these were the product of MGS’s fertile mind.
‘MGS’ knew that it was a ‘National Institute’, and that the Navy, alone, could train all sea-going personnel. He undertook to train Police launch drivers, 11–ton fishing vessel masters, seamen and other sailors qualifying themselves for merchant marine service, staff for the Ceylon Shipping and Fisheries Corporations. Many of those we then trained went to sea with “Academy Certificates”.
His greatest achievement was that he showed the world that “Our Navy could fully train Officers from cadets upwards, who could hold their own with Naval Officers in any Navy, anywhere”. By this time he had not only toured Royal Navy training schools but had done a further study tour of the US Navy Academies at Annapolis and Washington and the US Naval Western Command School at San Diego.
He had been elected a Fellow of the Royal Meteorology Society, Fellow of the Institute of Marine Engineers and a Member of the Institute of Navigation, London. He was eminently qualified to carry out the tasks of training of all types of officers: no longer did we have to ask England or India to train them for us. The ‘first intake’ of these Cadet Officers was in 1969 and it must have caused ‘MGS’ great satisfaction when one of them rose to ‘Command the Navy’.
‘MGS’ himself went further up in his career, becoming the first Instructor Officer to be appointed Naval Officer-in-charge, Trincomalee, and (NOICT, now called ‘Commander Eastern Naval Area’. He was, therefore, “the first (and only) Instructor Officer to have been appointed to command both a Shore Establishment and a Naval Area”. After this he returned to Colombo, preparing for retirement as Instructor Commander as Director, Naval Training.
After retirement, he was snapped up by the Ceylon Shipping Corporation and appointed Staff Captain to train Merchant Navy Cadets on board their ships.
‘MGS’, the man, was a most engaging and enjoyable character. Of moderate height and modest in manner, he could charm anybody with his simplicity and vast fund of stories, anecdotes and tales of the supernatural. His broad smile, bright eyes and informality, won him many friends and, in those happy days in Diyatalawa – where there were Army and Air Force camps larger than our own little Rangala – it was to ‘MGS’ that people from all Services came for advice and solutions when they were faced with unusual problems, whether they were mechanical or personal. The Wardroom was a happy, relaxed place where many officers of the other Services felt more at home than in their own Messes. And over all the revelry, the music and the humorous banter, the benign and smiling ‘MGS’ presided and kept the peace.
The Navy had, in those days, many a colourful personality, many of whom contributed in great measure to making it a great place to be in. The very fact that, at MGS’ funeral, every retired Navy Commander alive was present, is proof enough of how much his contribution had been appreciated.
Today, when the Navy has many training bases, it is proper for us to remember that “MGS was the Academy, and the Academy was MGS”.
In his centenary birth anniversary year (2017), the Academy will witness its 50th anniversary. The time has come, I believe, for the Academy and the Navy to recognise befittingly his outstanding services. This, I ask of them.
-Ins. Lt. Cdr. Somasiri Devendra SLN (Rtd)