At its peak in the late 80s and 90s, armadas of up to 30 vessels fitted with steel-tipped bows – designed for ramming police vessels – would swarm into secluded Hong Kong waters at night. Assisted by accomplices, they would load cargoes of contraband luxury goods before speeding off towards mainland China.

They were basic but manoeuvrable, and unless the smugglers were arrested in the act of loading contraband, or intercepted with illicit cargo on board, convictions were almost impossible. Huge profits could be made by criminal gangs seeking to satisfy an insatiable demand created by rising prosperity on the mainland, accompanied by high import tariffs. A fully loaded dai fei could transport, say, 400 VCRs, at a profit of about HK$1 million for a night’s work.

“They had four or five big V8 outboard engines on these pre-moulded GRP shells,” says Bird, “and they used to fly across the water at speeds of up to 50 knots, hence the name dai fei – big fliers.”

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On loan from the Hong Kong Marine Police, the last of the classic dai fei will be displayed at the Hong Kong Maritime Museum as part of a new exhibition, called “Hong Kong’s Maritime Miracle: The Story of Our City since 1945”, which traces the importance of maritime themes in the development of post-war Hong Kong.

“The Hong Kong Marine Police’s work and history is very much part of what we call the Hong Kong maritime community,” says museum director Professor Joost Schokkenbroek. “The dai fei represents a phase in the city’s commercial development when circumstances to make a living were dire for many; a phase when Hong Kong was expanding as a centre for trade and commerce – locally, nationally and globally.”

The dai fei that will be on display was seized off Fan Lau on February 12, 2000 during an anti-smuggling operation, and was then converted into a police pursuit and training vessel, designated PV70.

“The dai fei will contribute to the exhibition as a testimonial of the city’s maritime history,” says Schokkenbroek.

Timothy Worrall, deputy district commander of the Hong Kong Marine Police Outer Waters District, was instrumental in having PV70 professionally restored and made available for display. He says that when it was captured it was being used in an attempt to smuggle a new left-hand-drive luxury vehicle to mainland China, and a total of eight people were arrested, but smuggling was not restricted to cars.

“In my time with the Marine Region,” says Worrall, “I have seen cobras, monitor lizards, pangolins, lobsters, salmon, green turtles, cameras, antibiotics, abalone, VCDs, luxury handbags and clothes, cosmetics, sandalwood, jadestone, frozen meats, projectors, computer components and luxury vehicles.”

The vessel on display entered service with Marine Police on December 11, 2001, and was later used as a police training vessel for high-speed interceptions.

“Initially, when planning her possible public display, we considered giving her the moniker of The Last Dai Fei as at that time none had been seen for many years,” says Worrall. “However, vessels with a clear lineage to dai fei reappeared in 2020 and for this reason, this idea was subsequently dropped.”

Sadly, the dai fei story is not just historical. The tragic death of Chief Inspector Kary Lam Yuen-yee, during anti-smuggling operations in local waters on September 25 last year, was a reminder that preventing smuggling is still a dangerous business.

While giving chase to a speedboat suspected of smuggling, in waters near Hong Kong International Airport, the vessel under pursuit ignored repeated police warnings and crashed into the starboard side of Lam’s boat. It caused the interceptor to capsize and four officers, including Lam, to be thrown overboard. Her body was recovered two days later.

The incident brought back chilling memories for many who served at the peak of the dai fei operations.

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“When I heard the news, I relived that night when my guy died – the darkness, the speed, the violence – all those extreme feelings came flooding back,” says Bird, who wrote an account of his experiences in his book A Small Band of Men (2020).

“In those days, my main priority was not to let anyone get killed for a boatload of VCRs,” he says. But, on the night of June 4, 1990, he was not successful.

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Police Constable Chan Kun-pun, 28, was fatally injured when his police rigid-hulled inflatable boat (RHIB) was rammed by a dai fei in Tolo Harbour.

He died in hospital two days later, a night Bird is never likely to forget, and the death of Chan, the first fatality of the dai fei era, elevated the issue of smuggling from an irritating criminal activity to a major public concern.

That night there were two dai fei loading their cargoes at Sam Mun Tsai, in the inner Tolo Channel, when the area was known as “smuggling central”. Bird led three police RHIBs into the bay under cover of darkness, hoping to catch the smugglers in the act. Each police vessel had three crew members: a coxswain, a sergeant and a radio operator.

The smugglers spotted the approaching police vessels and the dai fei scrambled, taking off from the sea wall and leaving their cargo of electrical goods tumbling all over the dock and into the water. One of them attempted to ram Bird’s RHIB and he had to manoeuvre frantically.

Bird later received a radio message that there had been a collision, and on arrival at the scene it was immediately apparent something terrible had happened. Two officers had been recovered from the water and another, Chan, was in a critical condition and receiving first aid.

“I later found out from the two surviving crew members that they had been in the collision with the other dai fei that they were tracking,” says Bird. “They seemed to be gaining on it, but then it suddenly turned and came straight for them; the guys were convinced it was a deliberate ramming.”

The news made the front page of local newspapers and on June 7, 1990 (the day after Chan’s death) the South China Morning Post published an editorial that reflected public alarm about Hong Kong becoming what the newspaper called a “Chicago-on-the-Sea”.

“At a time when there is concern over the escalating levels of violence on the streets with robberies and gunfire, the prospect of nautical shoot-outs is unacceptable,” stated the editorial.

Public outrage prompted questions in the Legislative Council and new laws were introduced in April 1991 restricting the size and number of outboard engines on Hong Kong vessels, and a barrier was installed across the mouth of the Tolo Channel, where it remains today.

“Chan’s death escalated things and helped people realise just how dangerous this all was and that it had to be stopped,” says Bird.

Initially, the new laws, which also increased the maximum fine for smuggling 50-fold and the jail term from six months to two years, were effective, but the success was short-lived. The smuggling syndicates reintroduced smaller vessels known as chung fei and, when demand for luxury cars again grew, the dai fei returned, too.

The syndicates identified new locations and used audacious new tactics. So-called car jockeys stole up to 15 vehicles per night and drove them to secret locations, where they were loaded on to dai fei by mechanical diggers stolen from nearby construction sites and fitted with canvas loading strops.

After a brief hiatus, the deadly game was back on. If a laden dai fei was intercepted, the contraband cars were often found with the keys in the ignition and the engines still running. Research published by the University of Hong Kong suggests that 660 luxury vehicles worth HK$200 million were stolen in the city in 1990 and not recovered, compared with 156 the previous year.

Hong Kong’s wealthy elite suddenly took an increasing interest in the issue of smuggling as their beloved wheels started to disappear on a regular basis, bound for the back of a dai fei.

In April 1991, Navy News reported that Royal Marine Corporal Matt North from HMS Peacock was thrown from his Royal Navy RHIB while pursuing a smuggling vessel, and while in the water, the boat tried to run him down.

On September 24, 1991, station sergeant Put Yim-chiu, 48, was seriously injured when his police vessel was rammed by a dai fei during an anti-smuggling operation off Lamma Island. He died the same day in hospital. His death also made headlines in local newspapers, which reported that Put lost his life when a smuggling speedboat equipped with four 275HP engines deliberately rammed his police Zodiac head on. Three Chinese crewmen were arrested at the scene.

Put’s death, like Chan’s the year before, provoked a surge of concern and a renewed crackdown. A new Anti-Smuggling Task Force (ASTF) was formed in the early 90s, which established close cooperation between the police, the Customs and Excise Department and the British Royal Navy.

Sammy Leung Yan-keung is a retired station sergeant who was in the thick of anti-dai fei operations in the 90s and early 2000s, and involved in the capture of more than 40 smuggling vessels.

Leung shows a photograph from 1993, kept on his phone, of a badly damaged dai fei with the forward section of the vessel completely sheared off after another high-speed chase south of Lamma Island.

“The dai fei sank with its crew,” recalls Leung, and though no official list is available, many dai fei crew members were injured or killed during the height of the smuggling era.

“I understood the smugglers because life was difficult back then and it was a well-paid job,” says Leung. Typically, they were men in their 40s with backgrounds as fishermen or professional mariners just looking to provide for their families.

“I arrested one coxswain twice, within about 12 months,” says Leung. “He actually recognised me the second time.”

Although not a common occurrence, the nautical shoot-outs once denounced as unacceptable by the Post had become a real possibility by the mid-1990s.

On New Year’s Eve 1993, two Royal Navy fast-pursuit craft were fired on by smugglers and, a few days later, Leung was part of an ASTF team pursuing a dai fei in darkness near Basalt Island, in PV29: another captured dai fei converted into a high-speed pursuit craft.

“As we drew level, we switched on our flashing blue police light and illuminated them with a searchlight,” says Leung. “The next thing we heard was ‘bam-bam-bam’ and while we couldn’t see the weapon, it was obvious they had opened fire on us.”

Inspector James Mather was in charge of PV29 at the time and, according to Leung, Mather returned fire with his Heckler & Koch MP5 service-issue submachine gun. The incidents were reported in the Post on January 15, 1994, under the headline “The war in our waters”.

“It was a very dangerous situation travelling at 45 knots at night in rough waters while being fired at but at the time I was totally focused on trying to make the arrest,” says Leung. “I couldn’t think of anything else.”

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Mather, who retired in 2017, says the first notion his team had that a dai fei was in the vicinity would be catching sight of the diminishing line of white water created by the wake of a high-speed craft or the faint but unmistakable aroma of two-stroke Mercury outboard engines’ exhaust fumes.

“Either would make our heart rates rocket,” he says, “as we knew it was then game on.”

By this time, the dai fei battle was also being fought from land and air using helicopters. Retired police superintendent Alan Crowther was a senior inspector, invited to join the ASTF in 1992, when tactics were changed to incorporate land teams and focus on arrests rather than seizures.

In the spring of 1993, as part of Operation Alkoran, Crowther and his land team were tipped off about a new loading location near Stanley, at Tung Tau Wan, close to a new sewage-treatment works that was still under construction.

Crowther hired a pleasure junk and dressed as if he were on a jolly day out, then landed a four-man ambush team on the beach from the junk by inflatable boat.

“We waited and waited, when suddenly in the pitch black a dai fei shot past the junk at about 40 knots. It was visible for about a second or two then gone,” says Crowther, who has supplied photographs for the Hong Kong Maritime Museum exhibition.

After a few cautious dummy runs, a second dai fei appeared on the scene. This was followed by the smuggling team, who arrived by road with two Mercedes-Benz accompanied by a mechanical digger they had hot-wired at the construction site and fitted with canvas strops to turn it into a mobile crane.

Crowther’s team waited for the first car to be loaded and at about 3am, he sprang the trap with the second car still suspended from the makeshift crane.

They arrested the second dai fei crew and four smugglers working as loaders and handlers.

“I heard about PV70 being put on display by the Hong Kong Maritime Museum about a year ago,” Crowther says. “I fully support the idea, it’s part of Hong Kong’s history.”

Many of those involved in anti-smuggling operations in the 80s and 90s believe it’s an important reminder of the dangers faced by law enforcement officers, past and present, and a tribute to the ultimate sacrifices paid by some of them. A commemorative plaque will be installed in memory of the three officers who lost their lives.

“It’s a symbol of what we used to do,” says Bird, “and the guys who risked their lives every night.”