Mealtimes are important to most sailors, and with few exceptions Hong Kong Marine Policemen have never been noted subscribers to the `corned beef sandwich and mug of cocoa on the bridge' school of maritime catering. Indeed, just how sacred an event a mealtime can be was discovered by Mike Turner one day in 1961 when he was on PL2 under the command of Tony Sirett. It was lunchtime, and the launch was anchored in the channel between Basalt and Town Islands, which in those days were part of a major military firing range. No shelling of the islands was supposed to take place without military safety boats first clearing the area, but the crew had hardly sat down to their lunch when the launch was suddenly straddled by a salvo of shells.
The big cruising launches carried two cooks, one to cook Chinese food and the other European. These were important men, and their abilities - or lack of them - could raise great passions. One launch commander fell out with his cook to such an extent that he marooned him on an islet near the mouth of Mirs Bay. He had disappeared by the time the launch returned a few hours later, which was taken as resignation.
Such disagreements were comparatively rare however. Many of the officers' cooks were former Royal Naval stewards, and very dignified figures in their own right: most officers recognised how lucky they were to have them at all. Peter Leeds remembers:
At the end of each patrol it was the responsibility of the most junior sub-inspector on board to fill out the `compradore's book'. This was the order for the food for the next patrol; an important job which could be quite complex. Mike Cuningham recalls:
Others were less finicky. Mike Giles-Morris, for example, would buy a bucket of prawns on the first day out, get the cook to curry them, and have curried prawns for breakfast, lunch and dinner for the rest of the trip.
Whatever the tastes of the crew, the compradore could usually provide the ingredients. There was the occasional failure though... Mike Illingworth had a young sub-inspector in his crew for a while who was not of the brightest (he did not last long on the launches). One day, while he was laboriously making out `the book', he asked Mike if he had any special instructions for the menu. "Put down a dozen fresh maidenheads" said Mike solemnly, which the sub-inspector duly did. How hard the compradore tried to fill the order is not on record, but the book came back the following trip with the words "Sorry - no stock" neatly written beside the entry.