Written by:
Hj Zulheimy Bin Maamor
Veteran of the Royal Malaysian Navy
I joined the Royal Malaysian Navy when patrol craft were still the workhorses of the fleet — small, noisy, salt-caked, and always moving. This is not an official history. It is a deck-level memory of two hulls, two squadrons, and one year that taught me what “small ship, big sea” really meant.
Introduction — The PC Era
In the mid-80s, if you were posted to a Patrol Craft, you understood two things: you would be wet more often than not, and you would see more of Malaysia’s maritime borders than any staff officer in KL. The PCs were old by then, but they were honest ships.
Between 30 March 1987 and 28 March 1988, I served on two very different PCs — one on the east coast facing the South China Sea, the other on the west coast facing the Strait and beyond. This is that year, told as it was lived: watches, boardings, anchorages, and the quiet moments in between.
KD PANAH
14th Squadron Patrol Craft
Tg.Gelang, Kuantan, Pahang
30.3.1987 - 11.10.1987
My first Patrol Craft was a Kris class PC, KD Panah (P42) of the 14th Squadron Patrol Craft (14th PC) based at Tanjung Gelang, Kuantan, Pahang.
KD PANAH was a Kris-class, one of the batch built in the United Kingdom in the 1960s that formed the backbone of RMN’s coastal force for two decades. She was not fast by modern standards, she was loud, and her mess deck leaked when we took green water over the bow — but she could stay out.
I reported to Tg. Gelang, Kuantan. 14th Squadron. Our patch was the EEZ in the South China Sea. The job was mostly invisible: deterrence, presence, boarding. The real traffic then was Thai fishing boats — deep-hulled trawlers that worked our waters at night, lights off, nets down.
Two Commanding Officers in my time: Lt Kdr Zainal Murad and then Lt Zainal Rashid (Diver). Different styles, same seamanship. With Lt Kdr Zainal Murad, I learned how to read a contact not just on radar but by its behaviour — the hesitation before a turn, the sudden change in engine note.
Life on a Small Patrol Craft
Life on a PC is measured in small mercies. A cold drink at Pulau Tioman after a week of ration water. A quiet anchorage at Tak Bai, Thailand, where the smell of Tom Yam from the galley could make the whole upper deck forget we were on patrol.
You learn to sleep through diesel vibration, to shower with a bucket, to write letters that take three weeks to arrive. And you learn that 22 men in 96 feet becomes a family, whether you plan it or not.
One day we had a near-ramming. We had ordered a Thai boat to stop for boarding. She pretended to comply, then at the last 50 yards put her helm hard over to run between us and our RHIB. The smell of diesel, the shouting, our coxswain pulling us clear. On a PC, there is no margin. You feel everything.
You don’t really “sail” a PC. You live on it. We anchored off islands not for scenery but because the hull needed rest and the crew needed a night without rolling. Pulau Tioman was a favourite — then still quiet, water so clear you could see the anchor chain vanish into blue. We would scrub the hull waterline, swim around the ship, and the coxswain would tell us not to go too far because of current.
The most unexpected run was the border: from Pengkalan Kubur, Kelantan to Tak Bai, Thailand. On paper it was a routine riverine and coastal check. In reality it meant crossing into a different world for half a day. We secured alongside and walked to a Muslim stall near the market. The Tom Yam — sour, salty, with catfish and young tamarind — still sits in my memory as the best I’ve ever had. The stall owner knew we were TLDM. He just smiled and added more rice.
Pasukan Kadet Bersatu Malaysia (Laut) during Sea Training at South China Sea in 1987.
Hari Raya at Sea — South China Sea, 1987
Hari Raya at sea in 1987 fell while we were underway. No ketupat from home, no family. Hari Raya Puasa came while we were at sea. There was no going home. The cook had kept nasi himpit and rendang in the coolbox since Kuantan. We ate after Maghrib on the upper deck, paper plates bending.
“At sunset we fired flares — red and white falling slow over black water. Everyone on deck, in clean jerseys. Nasi himpit, rendang from the galley, eaten with hands that still smelled of grease. Then solat Raya on the aft deck, the ship hove-to, and a silence I have never heard again at sea. No engine, no radio. Just breathing.”
At night, the Captain ordered flare firing — not for distress, but for celebration. Parachute flares hanging like small moons. A white star hung over the South China Sea for forty seconds and we all looked up like children.
Morning was different. We performed Solat Raya on deck. The ship was stopped, drifting. After the takbir, no one spoke loudly. The sea was flat. I remember thinking, this is what fitrah feels like — nothing between you and horizon.
The boy who drifted 29 hours
In that same deployment, the fleet was still talking about LK1 Abdul Jalil Bin Saat from KD SRI SARAWAK. He had fallen overboard — or been washed — and spent 29 hours adrift before being found alive. On a big ship, man overboard is a drill. On a small PC at night, in monsoon transition, it is a different fear altogether. We checked lashings twice after that story. We counted heads three times.
Ref : Utusan TV : Wira Tidak didendang - 29 Jam Terapung di Lautan.
KD SRI NEGRI SEMBILAN
12th Squadron Patrol Craft
Lumut, Perak
12.10.1987 - 28.43.1988
On 12 October 1987, I crossed to the west coast. KD SRI NEGRI SEMBILAN, pennant P3146, 12th Squadron Patrol Craft (12th PC), based at Lumut, Perak. She was a different pedigree altogether: built by Vosper Ltd, Portsmouth, England, commissioned on 28 September 1964.
Her first Commanding Officer was Lt Kdr Mohd Zain bin Mohd Salleh — a name every junior sailor knew, because he would later become Chief of Navy in 1977. To serve on a ship that had been his first command felt like stepping into a lineage. The wardroom had a faded commissioning photo. You could see the same gun mounting, same bridge, twenty-three years earlier.
I was posted as Laskar Kanan. In truth, that was a mis-posting. A PC’s complement called for Laskar Kelas 1 for my trade. But the Navy in those days was pragmatic: if you were qualified and available, you went. So I learned quickly. On a PC, rank is less important than whether you know where the emergency steering is without looking.
The Commanding Officer when I was at KD Sri Negri Sembilan was Lt. Mior Rosdi bin Dato' Mior Jaafar, who was also a Navigation Officer when I was onboard KD Ganas at Woodlands, Singapore in 1981.
PULAU BIDONG
Our patrol box often included Pulau Bidong, 45 kilometres off Terengganu. Since 8 August 1978, when 121 Vietnamese landed and were taken in, the island had become a UNHCR transit camp. By June 1979, at its peak, there were 40,000 people on an island barely a kilometre long.
In July 1987, KD Sri Negri Sembilan was tasked to patrol the waters around the island - at that times the largest Vietnamese refugee camp in the world, administered by UNHCR with Malaysian Navy support.
By 1987 the numbers were lower, but the camp was still there — long atap sheds, laundry lines, church and pagoda. We were not there to administer. We were there to watch the water: to deter pirates who preyed on refugee boats, to prevent unauthorised landings, and to report movements.
“From the bridge at 0200, Bidong looked like a small city with no streetlights — cooking fires flickering, dogs barking across water. You could smell the island before you saw it. And you understood: these people had crossed the same sea that was now rocking us to sleep, but for them it was not a patrol.”Station off Bidong — Night Watch
We also saw Cambodian families, including some Khmer Rouge remnants who had drifted after the collapse. The politics were above my pay grade. Our orders were simple: ensure safety of life at sea, and ensure Malaysian sovereignty was respected. We gave water when needed. We shadowed suspicious boats until they turned back.
The pirate threat was real. In the late 70s and early 80s, refugee boats had been attacked in these waters. By ’87 we patrolled with live ammunition and strict searchlight discipline — never illuminating the camp directly, always the sea approaches.
Pulau Bidong in 1987 was not a headline anymore. It was a daily routine of humanity - births, deaths, lessons under trees, letters home that might never arrive.Our job was to keep the sea lane safe and the island supplied.
OSTEX & Goodwill to Belawan / Medan
November brought OSTEX in the Strait of Malacca, followed by a goodwill visit to Indonesia. We sailed in company with KD SERAMPANG (41). Two small PCs in formation, doing manoeuvres that bigger ships would find trivial, but for us it meant everything had to be precise — station keeping at 4 cables in a 3-metre swell is not comfortable.
We berthed at Belawan, the port town 24 kilometres from Medan. Medan in 1987 was — and still is — the largest city in Sumatra: noisy, hot, full of becaks and kretek smoke. For a sailor from Lumut and Kuantan, it felt like another continent, even though it was just across the Strait.
Part of the goodwill programme was a trip inland to Lake Toba — the largest lake in Indonesia, formed in a supervolcano caldera. We went in a bus that had no air-conditioning, through palm estates and Batak villages. The lake itself was vast, like a sea at altitude. We stopped at a market near Parapat.
The incident at Toba
There, one of the sailor from KD Serampang, suddenly became kerasukan — possessed. He shouted, eyes rolled, collapsed among the fruit stalls. The market went quiet. Our chief tried to hold him, but he was strong. An old Batak man pushed through — a bomoh, or datu — and asked us to step back. He spoke softly in Batak, sprinkled water from a bottle, placed his hand on the boy’s forehead.
Within minutes, the crewman calmed, then wept. The bomoh said nothing more, just waved us away. On the bus back, no one joked. The CO later said: “When you are a guest abroad, guard your mouth, guard your manners, guard your thoughts. You are not only representing yourself.” That lesson stayed longer than the lake.
Fate of the Ships
Years pass. Hulls that were once home become statistics. KD SRI NEGRI SEMBILAN served until 2006, when she was decommissioned from TLDM and handed over to the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA) as KM NYIREH.
Her final service was perhaps her most beautiful. On 20 April 2017, she was sunk off Pulau Payar Marine Park as part of the biodiversity reef project — an artificial reef. No ceremony that I attended. Just a controlled sinking, water filling the compartments where we once kept charts and rice.
KD PANAH?
She went earlier, broken up after years in reserve. Kris-class PCs were never meant to last forever. KD Panah (P42), is currently active and back with the Royal Malaysian Navy but it now operates under the new name KD Sri Sarawak (P48).
But for those who served, the smell of bilge and paint stays.
Hj Zulheimy Maamor
26 August 2026: 2.22 a.m
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