Gold Medal 1854/55
Gold Medal awarded to Cdr Edward Franklin RN for his gallant efforts to get help for 300 French and English sailors wrecked in a terrific gale off the Crimea on 14th November 1854.
A letter was read from Vice-Admiral Sir J Deans Dundas, KCB., late Commander-in-Chief in the Mediterranean, and from Captain Carter, RN., of his flag ship Britannia, and others, detailing the most gallant and praiseworthy conduct of Commander Edward Franklin, RN, who, at great hazard and personal risk pulled upwards of 4 miles in a small gig through a heavy surf, for the purpose of procuring assistance from the Admiral, (which was obtained after the gale abated, so as to make it possible to send boats with safety), and proceeding to the succour of nearly 300 French as well as English sailors, in the transports wrecked in the terrific gale of the 14th November, off the coast of the Crimea, when the Prince Resolute and Capt. Franklin’s own transport the Rodsby were lost, and in her, all his clothes etc.
It appeared that the exposure to which he was subjected brought on an attack of sickness, which obliged him to be invalided; and it having been reported that his gallantry on a previous occasion of shipwreck, in 1835, off Hove, near Brighton, had won for him the Silver Medal of the Life Boat lnstitution, the Committee, feeling that such conduct was deserving of the highest honour, unanimously conferred upon him the Gold Medal of the Shipwrecked Mariners’ Society, and it is to the credit of the Board of Admiralty, that they have since appointed him to a command in the ordinary at Portsmouth.