Worrall says he and fellow mess officers are custodians of the collection, which represents their past, and they feel obliged to hand it over to the next generation.

According to author and former officer Iain Ward, the formation of the marine police was prompted by the need to deal with piracy. Many of the collection’s artefacts reflect this traditional element of Hong Kong criminality, which remained a threat until the 1960s.

Mounted on a pillar inside the officer’s mess is an ornately carved dagger. The ceremonial peach wood sword belonged to notorious pirate Lau Chun-ping, and was acquired from his lair in Lung Kwu Tan in Tuen Mun district during an anti-piracy raid by marine police officers on October 20, 1947.

“It was taken off the wall of his house by Chief Inspector Tony Rose, who in 1947 led the marine police raid that ended Lau’s piratical career,” Ward says. “Tony later presented the sword to the mess.”

The collection also includes a large 19th-century French infantryman’s sword. It was recovered during an anti-kidnapping operation in June 1982, where it was wielded by a kidnapper who had seized a nine-year-old girl and kept her hostage for seven hours in Cheung Sha, on Lantau Island. The kidnapper was arrested and the girl returned to her family.

Outside the building a World War I-era naval gun is mounted on the quayside. The gun is Hong Kong’s original post-war Noonday Gun, fired once a day at East Point in Causeway Bay. It is part of the city’s folklore, immortalised by the English writer Noel Coward in a line from Mad Dogs and Englishmen.

The Noonday Gun may be familiar to people in Hong Kong but not many know it was swapped in May 1961. Jardine Matheson, the company that operates the gun, was running out of ammunition and receiving an increasing number of complaints from members of the public about the noise.

A deal was sealed to replace it with a smaller, quieter version that had been recovered from the wreck of Police Launch 4 when it sank after hitting a mine in 1946. The gun had been on display at the time outside the marine police headquarters in Tsim Sha Tsui – now the upscale 1881 Heritage cultural and shopping venue.

“The decision was made at police HQ without any consultation and it was an unpopular move at the time,” Worrall says.

According to two of Ward’s books – Sui Geng: The Hong Kong Marine Police 1841-1950 and Mariners: The Hong Kong Marine Police 1948-1997 – the marine police, or “sui geng” (water police) as the division is known locally, predates the land police force by two years.

Formed in 1844, the fledgling unit consisted of only a few boatmen working for the harbour master and marine magistrate, Lieutenant William Pedder. When Charles May arrived in Hong Kong in February 1845, he set about formalising the force and formed a unit of a dozen men armed with pistols and cutlasses, patrolling the harbour in one of four small rowing boats. In the earliest days of the marine police there were more people in Hong Kong living afloat than ashore, so basic community policing required transport by boat.

Among numerous ship models in glass cases that line the wide staircase in the Marine Police Headquarters is one of these early patrol vessels – a 20-foot (6m) timber Thames rowing galley dated 1848. It had a canvas awning to provide shade, and weapons were kept in a locked waterproof box. The five-man crew included a European sergeant, Chinese boatman, and Indian or Philippine oarsmen, seconded from the British East India Company.

On the first floor is the partially charred remains of the flag salvaged from the wreck of Seawise University, formerly the Cunard cruise liner RMS Queen Elizabeth. The famous ship caught fire and capsized in Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour in January 1972.

Outside the mess is a large Japanese flag with bullet holes, which was hauled down after World War II from the former marine police HQ at Tsim Sha Tsui. Inside is the battered office chair reputed to have been used by Vice-Admiral Masaichi Niimi of the Imperial Japanese Navy, who used the same building as his headquarters during the occupation of Hong Kong.

Among the hundreds of artefacts, one special exhibit might be the catalyst to make the stories they tell available to the public.

Towards the end of this year, PV70 – one of the force’s high-speed training vessels – will be due for retirement. Worrall would like to see it go on display as part of an exhibition about the history of piracy, smuggling, illegal immigration, law enforcement and sea rescue.

One report estimated that at one point HK$8 million (US$1 million) worth of contraband goods was being smuggled out of Tai Po alone by dai fei every day.

“Tolo Harbour was smuggling central,” Worrall says.

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He explains that as the situation threatened to get out of control, police decided to try to capture dai fei and use them against the smugglers.

PV70 was originally one such boat, seized in 2000 off Fan Lau, southwestern Lantau Island, at the mouth of the Pearl River Delta. When it was intercepted it had a brand-new left-hand-drive luxury vehicle on board, bound for a customer on the mainland, and eight people were arrested at the scene.

After the court case, the vessel was confiscated complete with its five outboard engines. Like most dai fei, it had a reinforced bow with a steel forepeak, specially designed for ramming police vessels. It was converted for high-speed interception and training duties and redesignated by marine police.

“Chasing and intercepting high-speed boats at night is a highly specialised skill,” Worrall says. It was also very dangerous, having claimed the lives of two officers.

Francis Ng Yun-fat, a senior police inspector who retired in 2016, has taken a special interest in the historical collection.

Ng recalls a summer night in 1989 when his patrol vessel – also a captured speedboat – was rammed at high speed by a dai fei off the eastern entrance to Aberdeen Harbour. After being ordered to stop, the dai fei suddenly accelerated and flew over the police vessel’s bow, leaving a gaping hole in the side.

“It was so quick we couldn’t take evading action and the hole was so big I could see through it, but fortunately it was above the waterline,” Ng says.

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“The dai feis are an important part of Hong Kong’s maritime history and if we don’t preserve PV70, people will just forget, and it would be a fitting way to commemorate the two officers who lost their lives,” Worrall says.

Meetings have been held and the museum is enthusiastic about the idea of a public exhibition.

“We strongly support the idea of it being on public display and preferably at the Hong Kong Maritime Museum, which would be its natural home,” says Richard Wesley, the museum’s director. “We don’t want it to just disappear.”