Awarded to Captain Frederick Edwards RN (1842-1911). Obverse: Head of Queen Victoria with a diadem, hair tied in a knot (left). Legend: 'VICTORIA REGINA'. Reverse: Britannia in a helmet holding an upright trident seated on a block ornamented with a naval gun and trophy, Russian forts of Bomarsund and Sveaborg in the distance on either side. Legend: 'BALTIC'. Exergue: '1854-1855'. Inscription on edge: 'F.EDWARDS. H.M.S.NILE'. Suspended from a bar and yellow ribbon edged with blue.

He entered the Royal Navy on 15 February 1855, and as a naval cadet served in the Baltic during the Crimea War in HMS ‘Nile’. After his promotion to lieutenant, in ‘Euryalus’, he took part in the bombardment of Kagoshima during 1863 and the attack on shore batteries in Shimonoseki on September 1864. For the latter action he was mentioned in despatches and wounded, after leading an attack on the stockades in charge of the third company of small-arms men. During 1867, he was deployed off the coast of Ireland in HMS ‘Helicon’ during the Fenian rising.
During the Ashanti War, he was In ‘Rattlesnake’, at that time under the command of John Edmund Commerell. On the Gold Coast in present-day Ghana, Edwards commanded one of the boats in a reconnaissance of the Pra river led by Commerell in August 1873. The boats came under fire from the bank and Commerell was badly wounded. In retaliation, ‘Rattlesnake’ bombarded the nearby town of Chama (Shama). Edwards served as commander of ‘Kestrel’ from 1878 and conducted anti-pirate operations in the Malayan archipelago in 1879.
He retired with the rank of Captain in 1889. Afterwards he was active in naval publicity and recruitment, also in local life in Portsmouth and Southampton.

He married Mary Anne Morrison 8 Jan 1868 at Walton-on-the-Hill Liverpool. They had a large family, their places of birth indicating the couples’ moves from Harwich to Devon and back to Southsea. Their daughter, Edith May Wentworth Edwards was born in 1873 at Simons Town, in South Africa.