Story of a Signalman in the Royal Ceylon Navy (2026)

Where it begins

A boy who watched the harbour, then joined what he was watching

Andradi grew up moving between his father's postings as a postmaster, cut class to sit on the Galle Face wall and watch ships come in, and talked his way into the Navy Volunteer Force at seventeen.

Two years later he was in the largest intake the Regular Force had ever taken — nearly four hundred recruits. Barracks life after the 1958 riots was chaos: stolen kit, no passing-out parade, and a bout of hepatitis that put him in the sickbay for a month.

Restless and frustrated, he and a Tamil friend, Mylevaganam, tried to cross to India by catamaran from Point Pedro, planning to walk the rest of the way to England. A storm nearly drowned them; a fishing boat brought them back at dawn.

“I wrote to him saying I would be there for him even if I have to risk my life.”

In Andradi's own account, Chapter 3 — on hiding Commander Royce de Mel, Commander of the Navy, during a coup attempt.

The promise

Life on Parakrama — the years he calls the best of his life

H.M.Cy.S. Parakrama, a gift from Britain, took him through Trincomalee patrols, a Far Eastern cruise, and a night in Hong Kong holding hands with a girl he seriously considered jumping ship for.

By his own account, when a coup attempt put the Commander of the Navy on the run, Andradi — a signalman with no rank to protect — hid him in Borella cemetery, on a promise made years earlier to a friend.

The cost of trust

He built businesses, trusted people, and paid heavily for both

He left the Navy for love, rose at CARE International from field rep to the highest post a local could hold, then built a safari touring company and a contract with the British engineering firm Kellogg's.

In 1977 he handed the whole arrangement to a colonel so he could accept a friend's invitation to Sweden — and the colonel never paid him back.

He spent a year in Sweden living on strangers' goodwill, candles lit and flags raised whenever he visited. Later came a spiritual retreat in Rajasthan, and two decades of letters to people who had no reason to write back: Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, the Irish President, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Several did.

“For my own self it was not a loss, for I enjoyed to the fullest…”

Chapter 5 — on giving up his safari business for a year in Sweden.

The giving years

The part where the giving becomes the whole story

In 1998 Andradi co-founded the Association of Veteran Naval Communicators. By his own account, over the next twenty-five years, as Secretary of the Veterans Home Management Committee, he raised or secured more than Rs. 20 million in support for veterans — a twenty-bed residential facility, a modern kitchen, a deep well, and furniture and equipment — almost entirely from ex-Navy friends scattered across Australia and Denmark.

The honours followed: a medal from the Speaker of the House, a plaque from the Sri Lanka Armed Forces Veterans Association in September 2025, recognition as a Global Goodwill Ambassador. He was married for over fifty years to a doctor his friends called "the Florence Nightingale of Maharagama."

Letters to people who had no reason to reply

Replies from Downing Street, the White House, and Lambeth Palace

For over two decades Andradi wrote to heads of government and church. The book reproduces the replies as he received them — letterhead, signatures, and all.

• “I am grateful for the support of people like you.” — President Bill Clinton, 18 June 2008
• “The Prime Minister has asked me to thank you for your recent letter, the contents of which will be carefully noted.” — 10 Downing Street, 29 January 2002
• “Thank you too for sharing your views on the relationship between Deitism and the three monotheistic faiths.” — Lambeth Palace, 18 January 2008
• “The President is grateful for your thoughtfulness in writing and sends her good wishes.” — Office of the President, Dublin, 1 September 2008

Inside the Signalman's Story