This is a book about the Hong Kong Marine Police during the half-century between two traumatic moments in Hong Kong's eventful history: the territory's liberation from the Japanese in 1945 and its reversion to Chinese sovereignty in 1997. It is not a formal history, and although the reader will find no shortage of facts and figures in its pages anyone looking for the 1957 Merchant Shipping Ordinance summons figures or suchlike is likely to be disappointed. The emphasis is on stories and reminiscences, but these have to be set in context just as dry facts need to be amplified and illustrated by anecdotes.
Anecdotes there are in abundance, even though those quoted are but a fraction of those that have been contributed. I therefore apologise here and now to those who have shared their favourite reminiscences with me and are shortly to discover that they haven't been used. I had the same problem with the hundreds of photographs that people have shared with me, and I have no doubt that there will be some who disagree with the selection finally made.
The book was not written with the intention of `exposing' anything, rehashing past disagreements or raising the political ghosts of yesteryear. But the reversion of Hong Kong's sovereignty to China on 30 June 1997 inevitably meant change in the territory; not necessarily for the worse but nonetheless fundamental. The kind of stories recounted here, of comradeship between people of different races and backgrounds sharing common dangers and aspirations (a microcosm of Hong Kong itself in fact), are unlikely to be seen as relevant to the new order, at least in the short term. I thus believe they should be recorded now, for if they are not, many will soon be lost for ever: several of the book's contributors have already passed away.
Having served in the unit for 28 of the 48 years under review it is obviously not easy to be an entirely objective observer: no-one with any kind of active thought processes could serve in an organisation for such a length of time without wanting to change something. But the passage of time does wonders for the perspective, and I hope the issues which aroused my passions in the past will not be too obvious to the reader.
As has been said, this book does not set out to be a work of reference but to give an impression - or a series of impressions - of a unique body of men and women in an extraordinary place during what the Chinese call `interesting times'. The story cannot be told in strictly chronological form, for while the development of the organisation and its fleet falls naturally into three broad phases many of the problems faced by its men and women are timeless. Some of them seem insuperable, and figured as largely in the unit's first ten decades as they have in the last five. Not all is excitement and adventure either: like their counterparts on land, marine policemen regularly have to deal with the mundane, the unpleasant and the emotionally disturbing.
The approach is therefore mixed. Part I is a brief summary of the command's history up to the Second World War. The remaining parts, each commencing with a chapter reviewing the period as a whole, cover the three phases of its development between 1948 and 1997 chronologically, while including thematic chapters on developments in areas of particular interest. Documentary sources are usually given in the text, but wherever possible the story is told in the words of the people who lived it.
Perhaps the overriding spirit of the book is best conveyed by a once not uncommon scenario: two patrol launches seizing a quiet moment to arrange a Pak Mai (an `alongside') in some secluded bay. There might be some swimming, or a game of football on a beach nearby, but at some stage feet would be placed comfortably on the gunwale and a bottle or two would make their appearance. Then there would be a few stories...