The Navy I Love

About the Book

This is the author’s second and a combined book, after writing and publishing in 2011 Dha-Byet-See: The Gun that Saved Rangoon. This book is not intended to be a historical account of his naval service but reflects his experiences during his service in both navies, afloat and ashore, in various capacities while he himself was growing up in maturity from a teenage youth of seventeen to an ambitious young man of twenty-five. Myanmar Navy was sixty-eight years old when its last official birthday was celebrated on December 24, 2015. The small force, named Burma RNVR was disbanded to make way for the new Burma Navy, which was to be formed as an arm of the three defense services of the Independent Union of Burma on January 4, 1948. Little is however known or officially recorded of the various actions and accomplishments of this elite volunteer naval force during the withdrawal campaign when Japan invaded Burma nor its active participation in subsequent amphibious operations and landings to reoccupy the Arakan Coast as a fighting unit in the Southeast Asia Allied Forces’ Operation Dracula invasion to reoccupy Rangoon and in the final mopping-up operations of the enemy in the Irrawaddy Delta. When the Japanese war was over in August 1945, the Burma RNVR and the new fledging Burma Navy became responsible for internal security and anti-rice smuggling operations while closely supporting the Tatmadaw’s fight against multicolored insurgents who were in revolt, attempting to bring down the government. The author fully appreciates the opportunities availed to him by the navy he loves, which trained him to be a confident, self-respected, capable administrator and a professional seaman, without which qualities he could not have achieved further success in his later civilian life and a career in commercial shipping in his own country and overseas.

About the Author

In 1941, at the age of fourteen, K.T Lwin, son of nationally well-known educator Sayagyi U Ba Lwin of Myoma High School left home and went overseas to join the I.M.M.T.S, ‘Dufferin’, in Bombay as a cadet. After he successfully completed a three year course and was ready to pursue a merchant marine career, the British Governor of Burma ‘desired’ that he should join the King’s Royal Navy. The author therefore joined the Burma Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, a small but elite volunteer coastal force consisting of naval gunboats operating on the Arakan front against the Japanese. He achieved his first command of a gunboat at the age of nineteen in the Burma R.N.V.R and transferred to the Burma Navy in 1948 when Burma achieved Independence, and was awarded the title of ‘Sithu’ for meritorious service in the Navy. He joined the first Burmese owned ship, ‘S.S. Pyidawtha’ and later became the first Burmese harbour pilot at the Port of Rangoon before promotion to Harbour Master. In 1959 he transferred his services to the Burma Five Star Line as Marine Superintendent and Head of Technical Division. In 1971, he established Burma’s first Institute of Marine Technology as Principal before retiring from Government after thirty years. He pursued a shipping management career in Singapore and in Thailand where he managed the first Thai privately owned liner shipping companies until 1980. Since then, he has established his own family crew management company which provides a full complement of trained Burmese seagoing personnel to foreign ship owners which employs over four hundred seafarers. Now at eighty nine, Capt. Lwin still attends office daily and travels extensively between Myanmar, Thailand and Australia where his four children five grandchildren and two great grandsons live. He likes to be known as the only Master Mariner who has acquired more flying time than sea service.