Awarded to Commander Thomas Arthur Bassett RNR (1875-1918). Obverse: Bust of King Edward VII in military uniform, cloak, order and medals. Legend: 'EDWARDVS VII REX IMPERATOR'. Reverse: Britannia standing (right) in a helmet, a lion behind her, a trident in her right and a palm branch in her left hand pointing towards the rising sun. Exergue: 'AFRICA'. Bars: 'JUBALAND', 'Somaliland 1902-4'. Inscription on edge: 'LIEUT. T.A. BASSETT. R.N.R. TRANSPORT SERVICE'. Suspended from a clasp and yellow ribbon edged with black with two narrow green stripes.

Commander Thomas Arthur Bassett was born at Southampton in 1875 and first went to sea as an apprentice on the schooner ‘Fonthill’ (1878), owned by James Dible & Sons. He became a junior officer with the British India Steam Navigation Co Ltd in 1896, employed as fourth mate on the ‘Virawa’ (1890). He gained his certificate of competency as master in 1901. During the period from 1900 to 1911 he served as a Royal Naval Reserve officer in the Boer War, Boxer Rebellion, Ogadeyn Punitive Force and Somaliland; and on the cruisers HMS ‘Hyacinth’ (1898) and HMS ‘Fox’ (1893) in the suppression of arms traffic in the Persian Gulf. Bassett continued to be employed by the British India company until 1906, when he took up appointment as a port officer at Tuticorin in the Presidency of Madras. From 1910 to 1914 he was Port Officer of Cochin and Negapatan. He was on continuous active service in the Transport Service of the Admiralty from August 1914, initially in India, then later at Liverpool, Newhaven and Portsmouth. He was promoted to the rank of acting commander (retired) in 1917. He died as a result of an accident at Portsmouth Dockyard on 29 September 1918.

Bassett married Helen Maude McEwan on 2 November 1908, in Tuticorin, Madras, India (Thoothukudi, Tamil Nadu.)