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Les Bird

Newsletter No. 6, April 2022

“The Daai Fei”

This is good news - Police Vessel 70 is saved

PV 70 (centre) in action during a training exercise as a 'smuggling daai fei.


After six months of discussions, the Marine Police and Hong Kong Maritime Museum signed a Memorandum of Understanding to preserve a former Police “Daai Fei” speedboat. In 2001 this four-engine, highly powered, speedboat was intercepted and arrested by the Marine Police while she was in the process of exporting stolen and unmanifested cargo out of Hong Kong waters, just south of Fan Lau Point, Lantau Island. Once the court case against those arrested driving this “Daai Fei” was concluded, the vessel was confiscated and then converted for use by the Marine Police. PV 70, as she became known, spent most of her police life as a training vessel, utilised to fine tune the chase and interception tactics of officers deployed to combat cross-border crime. Last year, after discovering that PV 70 was soon to be decommissioned and eventually scrapped, a small team of former and serving Marine Police officers, including myself, canvased the Hong Kong Government for the vessel to be preserved as a museum artifact. We felt that the preservation of PV 70 would not only provide a memory of a significant era in Hong Kong’s maritime history, we also felt that a converted "Daai Fei", displayed at the Maritime Museum, would also serve to honour all officers who have made the ultimate sacrifice in the execution of their duties on the waters of Hong Kong. PV 70 is scheduled to be displayed at Hong Kong’s Maritime Museum when the museum reopens after renovation in September 2022.


Engineers look over PV 70. Can this vessel be preserved?


The team that saved PV 70 discuss the options.


Kelvin NG and I onboard PV 70. In 2001 Kelvin was the Marine Police officer that intercepted this daai fei and arrested the smuggling crew.


The four 250hp engines of PV 70.


PV 70 sits in the Marine West Division Headquarters compound awaiting news of her fate. The news was good.

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