Sri Lanka (22 September to 7 October 1914)
Desperate for a safe harbour, the Morea steamed toward Port Colombo at full throttle. They arrived late on 22 September to find both harbours (the inner and the outer) crammed with more than seventy ships. In the city, The Times of Ceylon newspaper carried reports of:
• the Emden bombing Chennai (Madras),
• Colombo being under martial law,
• a tourist being apprehended as a spy because he photographed the harbour, and
• a wireless operator who had been court marshalled (and shot) for sending messages to German ships.
In short, Colombo was in the grips of Emden 'fever' with rumours and conspiracies spreading like wildfire across the city.
Amid the tumult, Ashby began his enduring fascination with Sri Lanka, its people and history. Indeed, between 1914 and 1930, he would visit the teardrop-shaped island at the bottom of India on five occasions. During this stopover (22 September to 7 October), he took forty-eight photographs as he travelled from the 'fevered' city of Colombo into the highlands, where he visited Kandy and Nuwara Eliya (little England) before venturing north to the remarkable ancient archaeological site at Anuradhapura and Mihintale.
Using his photographs of Sri Lanka, this map traces his route across the island in 1914.
