In the early years, the Club had fewer players than nowadays, and there were only 2 Flights. The winner of Flight-1 off-scratch match-play competition was and still is awarded the Kingsbury Cup.

The winner of the Flight-2 off-scratch match-play competition was originally presented with the Deacon Shield, and the winner's name engraved onto one of the Shield's name-plates.

• Charles Wetmore Deacon was born on August 2 1882, in Hilo, Hawaii and died on October 5th 1939.
• He is known to have been the "Engineer in charge of Submarine Line" within Bapco on 8/1/1934. No picture of Deacon has been located as yet.
• He became Bapco's Resident Manager in 1937 - see here [source]
• It was requested that he become Chief Local Representative in April 1938 - see here [source]
• He was approved as Chief Local Representative, also in April 1938 - see here [source]
• It was advised, on 17th September 1938, that he was on sick leave until further notice on - see here [source].

There are four entries in Belgrave's personal reminiscences to Deacon:

• Early 1933: "Motored to Sitrah in the morning, crossed the sea at the shallow place & got on to the island in the car. Met Deacon who showed us around."
• Early 1938: "Deacon & Thornburg called"
• Early 1938: "Then to the refinery which we went over rapidly. All the men working behaved, I thought, with very bad manners, and Deacon's manners too were lacking"
• Late 1938: references to dinner at the Deacons.

What can we deduce from the inscription on the Shield?, which is:
The reference to "sick leave until further notice" and the Shield's inscription words "Presented by the Company" (and not "Presented by C.W. Deacon"), is telling. This [source] reference to his death describes that he died at home in the USA in October 1939, having been stricken with something whilst in Iran.

There is a reference to the Deacon Shield in The Bahrain Islander of October 1954:
... as an experiment it was decided to alter the times of starting and finishing of competitions and accordingly the qualifying rounds of the Deacon Shield and the Whitbread Tankard Trophy Competitions are arranged to start on Thursday and end on Wednesday. If this arrangement seems satisfactory, it will be extended.
   In the early days, many of the Club's members were shift workers, often on duty at weekends. To allow these players to play competitively and maintain a current handicap, a Monthly Medal Competition was held each month, from September to April, played over a period of a week. Competitors organised their own playing partners, and the winner received a tankard.

The photo (above right), with a typed caption of June 9th 1947, has only the first two name-plates engraved with the winner's name, and these are dated 1940 and 1941. If the remaining 11 name-plates were engraved on every following year, the last one would have been for the year 1952. However, we know that the Pinhey Cup was awarded, for the first time, to the Flight-2 match-play winner in 1957. As there are 17 years between 1940 and 1956, perhaps there were 4 years when the Deacon Shield was not played for. Who knows.

The following photo shows the presentation of the Deacon Shield at the Annual Dinner Dance of 1947. The typed caption reads "Presentation of Deacon Shield to F. Waldron (Golf) June 5th 1947".


The three trophies on the table are (left-to-right) the Russell Cup, the BOAC Cup and the Kingsbury Cup. The location of the Deacon Shield, and its fate after being retired, are unknown.