interview
MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU Superintendent Timothy Worrall recalls 23 years as a second generation Hong Kong Police officer. By Raphael Blet
T
im Worrall stands on one of the force’s vessels. The marine police operates a fleet of 118 vessels and has over 2,200 men. Unlike most overseas police officers who grew-up in Britain, Worrall spent his childhood in Hong Kong. He is the son of a police officer and grandson of a mariner. “My grandfather, William Roy, came to Asia before the Second World War working on coastal trading vessels,” explains Worrall. “After the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong, he was interned in the Stanley Civilian Internment Camp. There, he met and later married my grandmother—her previous husband had been killed during the battle for Hong Kong whilst serving with the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps, near Repulse Bay. My father was born in the camp in 1945. Upon the surrender of the
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I used to type out my reports on a typewriter using carbon copy paper
Japanese, they were all freed in August of the same year.” William Roy went on to work as Salvage Master and Master Mariner for the now defunct Taikoo Dockyards (Swire). The dockyard built Police Launches 1 and 2 and he oversaw their handover to the Police (his son would eventually have Police Launch 2 under his command as Divisional Commander of Marine
North Division). He later published his memoirs No Cure, No Pay: Memoirs of a China Sea Salvage Captain. Worrall’s father—William Richard—joined the police in 1967, months after the notorious Hong Kong riots. It took him two attempts to be accepted into the police, in between which he joined the British Army for a couple of years. Like his son, he also became a superintendent, but is now retired. “I grew-up seeing my father going to work and doing many different jobs with the Force, things I considered exciting. I formed boyhood dreams of joining myself and serving in the Tactical Unit, Emergency Unit and Small Boat Division,” he recalls. Soon after finishing his studies in the south of England, Worrall went through the recruitment process which was done in