In Ireland in March, the average daytime temperature is around 10 degrees, and in the sunny Persian Gulf, you only need to wear a single shirt. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 ｉｎfo

Since leaving Limerick, the Cu-Chulin has sailed more than 30,000 kilometres, with shellfish on the bottom and only 18 knots at full power. Now in Manama, the capital of Bahrain, it has been driven into the dock for a complete overhaul and maintenance.

In today's Bahrain, there are two kinds of flags flying everywhere, one is a square red flag, which represents the sovereignty of the Emirate of Bahrain, and the other is the green, white and yellow tricolor flag with the crown sword and shield in the center, which means that this place is under the protection of the Kingdom of Ireland.

This island country located in the southwest of the Persian Gulf, between Qatar and Saudi Arabia, 24 kilometers from the east coast of Saudi Arabia and 28 kilometers from the west coast of Qatar, covers an area of 750 square kilometers, and has an indigenous population of less than 100,000, and is concentrated in the capital and surrounding areas.

Bahrain has a very long cultural history, with cities established in 3000 BC, while the Celts, the earliest inhabitants of Ireland, did not settle on the island until more than 600 BC. From the beginning of the 19th century, Bahrain became a British protectorate, until the signing of the London Armistice Treaty in 1915, the Irish tricolor flag was raised here, and then there was the discovery of Bahrain's oil fields and the industrial exploitation of oil.

Before it became famous for its black, shiny and viscous oil, the name Bahrain was almost unknown to the world. It is far from the Strait of Hormuz and Kuwait City, surrounded by good ports such as Doha, Jubail and Ghatif, and its commercial or military location is not significant. During the British period, the port of Manama gradually developed some modern port facilities, but the dockyards here were only capable of building small ships or repairing ordinary ships, and only those with great foresight invested a lot of money in this humble place - in just four years from 1915 to 1919, Ireland invested more than 300 million marks in Bahrain's infrastructure in the form of direct government funding and public-private partnerships, and built large oil fields with an annual output of more than 500,000 tons. As well as the pipeline from the oil fields to the capital Manama, Manama's port facilities have been renovated and many mechanized loading and unloading equipment have been added, so that 100% of the crude oil produced in the Bahrain oil fields can be transported to the refining site, avoiding the staggering waste that once occurred in the Baku oil fields in Russia.

Along with the huge investment came a large number of Irish engineers, skilled workers, businessmen and accompanying families. In Manama Harbour, the Natsuki couple were as well received as they were in any Irish town, and that made it impossible for them to explore the sights as much as the average tourist would. On the other hand, thanks to the convenience of the Irish garrison, they were able to enjoy a treatment that ordinary tourists could not achieve – a flight over Bahrain and the surrounding islands, and a unique view of the Persian Gulf from the air.

Bahrain is the Kingdom of Ireland's only overseas protectorate, but the Irish army stationed in Bahrain is not Ireland's only overseas consignment. According to the military agreement signed by the Allied powers in 1915, Germany, Austria, Italy, Turkey, Bulgaria, Ireland and other countries established defense matters in the jointly occupied areas, and Ireland stationed troops in northern France, Belgium, northern Ukraine, and Belarus, and the total number of troops sent accounted for about a quarter of Ireland's active forces.

Unlike overseas military alliances, Ireland deploys troops in Bahrain to protect its economic investments and the safety of its citizens. The main force on land stationed in Bahrain is the 2nd Royal Archer Regiment of Ireland, the officers and men of this unit basically joined the army during the War of Independence, and the quality of soldiers, combat experience and weapons and equipment are first-class in the Irish army, and often conduct joint exercises with the German troops stationed in the Persian Gulf region, and their combat ability has been recognized by the generals of the allied countries.

The Irish Task Force 1 deployed in Bahrain is a very small naval force, and the flagship light cruiser Nuada is a 14-year-old British reparations ship that is inferior to the Ku Chulin in terms of performance and plays the same role as a training ship. Task Force 1 has 1 destroyer, 3 gunboats, 2 submarines, and 4 auxiliary vessels. Except for the two ocean-going combat submarines, the "Ulster" and the "Connaught," which were built and put into service after the war, the rest are old ships that cannot be put on the table.

In addition, Ireland has also sent the 20th Naval Artillery Battalion to Bahrain, but so far, the Bahrain Island soldiers do not have a modern coastal defense fortress, the battalion has the number of the fortress unit, mainly responsible for the defense control of the port of Manama, sea state surveying, combat readiness construction, it actually has only a dozen German-made 105 mm howitzers, and the biggest use of these guns is to fire salutes.

With the exception of the positive military significance of the construction of a military airfield and the deployment of fighter wings near Manama, Ireland's defense in Bahrain is only symbolic from any point of view, with little ability to resist external attacks, which is extremely inconsistent with the strategic importance of Bahrain's crude oil production, and many Irish people are puzzled by this, but at the top of the Irish leadership, officials unanimously approve of Natsuki's strategy. Today, the Persian Gulf is a very important territory for Germany and the Ottoman Empire, where the Ottoman Turks alone deployed 400,000 troops, and Germany not only stationed more than 100,000 army troops, but also deployed a very strong battle fleet all year round, and established large coastal defense fortresses in Abbas and Kuwait. If Bahrain were to be militarily threatened by an enemy country, it would mean that the military dispositions of Germany and the Ottomans had been broken, and even if Ireland had sent all its troops there.

With the appropriate amount of military deployment to help maintain stability in Bahrain, the Irish government has adopted a moderate and enlightened strategy for the "protection" of Bahrain through the personal intervention of Natsuki, and they have built public infrastructure such as transportation, water supply, medical care, and schools that are free of charge for the locals, and encourage Irish investors to provide jobs for the locals, and to make the Irish people who come to Bahrain respect the beliefs and customs of the local Arabs in the form of official announcements. These initiatives allowed the Aborigines to quickly adapt to the new administrators, also from Europe, and even joined the Irish in celebrating the greatness of the Irish king.

Natsuki is not a saint who loves all things, nor does he want to change the historical trend of the colonies and protectorates with a lenient strategy, he just hopes to obtain as much oil resources as possible from Bahrain before this tide comes, so as to provide sufficient impetus for Ireland's economic rise, and all infrastructure investment should be regarded as an early return to the Bahrainis. In this regard, Baku is a cautionary counter-case – the Caucasus, where Baku is located, is not a traditional Russian territory, and has changed hands several times throughout history until modern times, when it became fixed on the Russian map. Baku's oil fields quickly became the world's largest oil producing region after they were industrialized, bringing great economic and financial benefits to Russia, and the oil reserves here were enough to be exploited for a century, but in just over 30 years, it quickly went from boom to bust. In 1904, when the oil workers went on a general strike because of the terrible living and working conditions, Russian government officials came up with the stupidest trick of all, instigating ********, supplying weapons to Circassians, Tatars, Chechens and other mountain people, encouraging them to attack the Armenian, Polish and Ukrainian workers who were the backbone of the strike. Baku was plunged into a bloody storm, and the violent turmoil paralyzed the Russian oil industry, and a large number of oil facilities were set on fire. The Russian oil industry continued to decline in the decade leading up to the war, with the share of Russian oil exports on the world market falling from 31% to 9% between 1904 and 1913, and the Russian economy plummeting due to the continued depreciation of black gold.

With Natsuki's wise strategy, the dark scene in Baku will naturally not appear in Bahrain. With the prosperity of the oil economy, more and more derivative industries have begun to emerge in Manama and its surroundings, and large refineries with an annual crude oil refining capacity of more than 100,000 tons have been built, and corresponding chemical plants have also entered the implementation stage from planning. The quicker results have been achieved in Bahrain's geography with a large sanatorium funded by the Irish government, which only provides free recuperation for high-ranking officers, honorary soldiers, model workers and other officially recognized people, and then expands its influence in Ireland through word of mouth. Investors are on the move, and it won't be long before commercial resorts and wellness facilities are created that will attract both Irish and international tourists.

The maintenance of the "Ku-Chulin" in Manama lasted more than a week, and the Natsuki couple almost **** enjoyed the sun and sand and palm coconut wind, and then took time to go to Kuwait to meet his old colleague Franz von Hipper, his former colleague in the German Navy, the hero of the Battle of Jutland served as the commander of the German Persian Gulf Squadron with the rank of vice admiral, and from the beginning of 1918 he also served as the German Persian governor, and his flagship was the Caesar-class battleship "Catherine" based in the Persian Gulf region, In addition, there were 4 dreadnoughts and 1 battle cruiser, and such a considerable combat force shows that Germany attaches great importance to the oil resources of the Persian Gulf.

The presence of the German Persian Gulf Squadron here was not only a symbolic presence, but the main object of defense was still Britain. After the signing of the Treaty of London, the colonial territory of the empire fell apart, a large number of African colonies together with the Suez Canal changed hands, the connection between the British mainland and the Asian colonies was greatly affected, in order to make up for the loss of oil resources in the Persian Gulf, Britain had to strengthen the oil development of the East Indies and the Malay Peninsula, but the oil fields there are widely distributed and small-scale, volcanoes, earthquakes, swamps, and jungles bring many difficulties to exploitation, and the cost of extraction and transportation is higher than that of Persian Gulf oil. Further expansion of production will require constant exploration and investment, as well as direct competition from emerging Asian countries, and a return to the Middle East will certainly give a huge boost to the UK's economic recovery.

(End of chapter)