The first Special Forces-style raid of the Crimean War resulted from a mild rebuke delivered by one senior Royal Navy officer to another more junior one.

Early in the conflict, in the summer of 1854, the British fleet was stationed off the Russian-occupied island of Wardo, close to Finland, in the Baltic.

Captain Hastings Yelverton, from HMS Arrogant, which was one of the larger warships in the area and had already seen action against Russian forces, paid an official visit to Admiral Sir Charles Napier, the commander of the British fleet. Yelverton was gently ticked off for the fact that dispatches from the Russian Tsar were being constantly landed on Wardo and forwarded from there to the Commanding Officer at Bomarsund. Napier's gripe was that the British forces had taken no action to prevent this.

Upon returning to his ship, Yelverton mentioned this state of affairs to his men and one of them, Lieutenant John Bythesea, became determined to please Napier by doing something to disrupt the flow of mail that British intelligence sources had identified.

Bythesea came up with an ambitious plan to slip on to Wardo and try to intercept the Russian mail as it was being moved across the island. He suggested that a foreign national, Stoker William Johnstone, whom he had discovered spoke Swedish, should accompany him on the mission. Yelverton's initial reaction was that a much larger force should accompany Bythesea but, in true Special Forces fashion, it was eventually decided that a larger party was more likely to draw unwanted attention.

At this time, Bythesea was 27. He had been born in Bath on 15 June 1827 and was the youngest of five sons of the Rev George Bythesea, the rector and patron of Freshford, Somerset. Bythesea's eldest brother, Lieutenant GCG Bythesea, of the 81st Foot, had been killed in action at Ferozeshuhur, a hard-fought battle in the Punjab in 1845 when the British defeated the Sikhs.

John Bythesea had broken with the family tradition of joining the army by entering the Royal Navy in 1841 as a Volunteer First Class. After passing the necessary examination, he was promoted to mate in February 1848. Between February and June 1848, he served on HMS Victory.

Then for the next year he served on HMS Pilot in the East Indies, and was promoted to Lieutenant on 12 June 1849. He was appointed to HMS Arrogant in September 1852 and saw action in the spring of 1854. On 18 May, the Arrogant, together with HMS Hecla, had come under fire from a force of Russian troops behind a protective sandbank.

The Russian troops were, however, soon dispersed and the next morning the two ships proceeded up a narrow channel to the town of Ekness. Here they faced determined opposition from two batteries. The Arrogant suffered two killed and four wounded before the enemy's guns were silenced.

It was on 7 August 1854 that Napier and Yelverton had the conversation about the former's desire to disrupt the Russian mail service. Just two days later, and clearly with minimal planning, Bythesea and Johnstone rowed ashore on their own.

Initially, luck was on their side. They made their way to a local farmhouse, where the owner had been forced to hand over all his horses to the Russians and was therefore only too willing to help them.

He not only gave them food and lodgings but informed them about how the Russians had improved a nine-mile stretch of road to make it easier and quicker for messengers carrying the dispatches to Bomarsund. However, the two men had not managed to arrive on the island unnoticed. Informants had told the Russians that a small shore party from the British fleet was on the island and search parties had been sent out to capture them. Bythesea and Johnstone were able to avoid capture only because the farmer's daughters gave them old clothes so that they were disguised as Finnish peasants.

On 12 August, having been on the island for three long days, Bythesea was told by the well-informed farmer that the Russian mail boat had landed and the dispatches were to be sent down to the fortress at Bomarsund at nightfall, with a military escort to accompany them part of the way.

That night, Bythesea and Johnstone hid in bushes along the way. They watched from a safe distance as the military escort, reassured that the route was clear, turned back leaving five unarmed messengers on their own. Bythesea and Johnstone knew the moment had come to strike.

Armed with just a single flint pistol, they ambushed the five men. Two fled into the night, while the other three were captured along with the dispatches. Bythesea and Johnstone returned to the hidden boat on which they had arrived and forced the three men to row to the Arrogant.

Johnstone steered the craft as Bythesea held the pistol and ordered their prisoners to row. On their arrival at the ship, the prisoners were taken on board while the dispatches were taken to Admiral Sir Charles Napier and General Baraguay d'Hilliers, the French commander. Napier was thrilled by their actions, while d'Hilliers' admiration for the men was said to be unbounded.

Bythesea's reward for the daring and successful mission was to be given command of the three-gun steam vessel HMS Locust, which was present at the fall of Bomarsund, as well as at the bombardment of Sveaborg in August 1855.

He was promoted to Commander on 10 May 1856. Neither Bythesea nor Johnstone expected their bravery to be officially recognised. Both modestly considered they had just been doing their duty.

However, at Queen Victoria's behest, the VC was instituted on 19 January 1856 for extreme bravery in the face of the enemy and the awards were able to be backdated to the early conflicts of the Crimean War.

The first VC to be won was the decoration given to Lieutenant Charles Lucas, who served in HMS Hecla, for throwing a live shell overboard on 24 June 1854. However, the second and third VCs to be won – although, in fact, the 22nd and 23rd to be announced officially in the London Gazette – were awarded to Bythesea and Johnstone. Bythesea's VC, which was the result of recommendations from Napier and d'Hilliers, was gazetted on 24 February 1857.

The first investiture, intended for the first 93 recipients of the medal, took place amid great fanfare in Hyde Park, London, on 26 June 1857. At the occasion, 62 servicemen received their medal from the Queen.

The remaining 31 were serving overseas and received their medals at a later date. Bythesea was the second man, after Commander Henry Raby, to have his VC pinned on him by the Queen, who remained mounted on her horse, Sunset, while conferring each award. Johnstone was one of those serving overseas and his medal was sent out for presentation aboard his ship.

Bythesea went on to serve at sea around the world, including in the operations against China from 1859–60. For his final seagoing command, in 1870, he was appointed to the battleship HMS Lord Clyde. However, this command ended in disgrace for the courageous commander. In March 1872, Lord Clyde went to the aid of a paddle steamer that had run aground off Malta.

However, in doing so, Lord Clyde also ran aground and had to be towed off by her sister ship, HMS Lord Warden. This episode led to Bythesea and his navigating officer being Court Martialled and severely reprimanded, with instructions that neither was to be employed at sea again. It was a sad end to Bythesea's previously distinguished and unblemished military career.

However, typical of the man, Bythesea bounced back from his humiliation. In 1874, the same year that he married, aged 47, he took up the post of Consulting Naval Officer to the Indian Government. This enabled him, over the next six years, to restructure, from the old Indian Navy, the Royal Indian Marine.

Further honours followed, the Most Honourable Order of the Bath in 1877 and a Companion of the Most Eminent Order of the Indian Empire the following year. He retired from the active list on 5 August 1877, only to be promoted to Rear Admiral 17 days later. He died at his home in South Kensington, London, on 18 May 1906, aged 79.

A guard of honour, made up of petty officers from HMS Victory, was mounted at the funeral. Bythesea is buried in Bath Abbey cemetery, while a memorial was erected to him and his brothers in his father's old church at Freshford.

There was a great sense of anticipation when Bythesea's medal came up for auction at Spink in London in April 2007. Not only was it the second VC ever won but, for me, with a dual passion for the VC and Special Forces medals, it was in many ways the ultimate military decoration from this period.

Bythesea's VC had been awarded for an early Special Forces-style operation, using a small, undercover force against a larger army for a specific target. I was therefore absolutely thrilled when the Michael A Ashcroft Trust became the successful bidder for Bythesea's VC, albeit saddened that his other medals and awards had been stolen some 30 years earlier.

Special Forces Heroes, published by Headline, is available now at £20. All author's royalties go to Help for Heroes, the charity which supports servicemen injured in Iraq and Afghanistan