Saturday, 14 March 2015 00:00
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A couple of readers had responded to the article on the Kandyan Convention (published in the Weekend FT of 28 February) regarding the last days of King Sri Wickrema Rajasinghe and his family.
Dr. Henry Marshall, Surgeon to the 1st and 2nd Ceylon Regiments who served in Ceylon (1809-1821) in ‘Ceylon: A General Description of the Island and its Inhabitants’ (1846) writes:
“The deposed king reached Colombo on the 6th March 1815, where he remained until the 24th January 1816, when he and his relations, dependants, and adherents, amounting to about 100 individuals, were transferred to the peninsula of India, first to Madras, and finally to the fort of Vellore.
“….On the 24th January 1816, the king, with his family, embarked in Colombo on board H.M. ship Cornwallis, for Madras….The king embarked, with his wives and mother-in-law, in the captain’s barge, and the attendants in another. The wind was high, and the boats encountered a good deal of sea in their passage to the ship.
“They were all taken into the ship by means of an accommodation-chair. Some of the ladies were greatly alarmed, while others suffered much from sea-sickness. The king showed no indication of fear; and, considering that he was carried through a rough sea, which he had not been upon since his infancy, to an English man-of-war, which he had not seen before, it must be acknowledged that his whole deportment indicated considerable dignity and firmness of mind.
“He died at Vellore, on the afternoon of 30th January 1832, aged 52 years, having been seventeen years a state prisoner. At the desire of his family, the body was conveyed to the place of burning before sunset, under the escort of a military guard, and accompanied by his male relatives and servants. He left one son, born in exile.”
Records state that Ehelepola was banished to Mauritius in 1825 after being arrested following the 1818 Rebellion.
