doing so. However, the idea had one major supporter ? Prince Albert, the husband of Queen Victoria. His support for the medal quickly won the backing of Victoria herself. The objections of senior military commanders were overridden. Victoria and Albert ordered the War Office to come up with an idea for such a medal and Prince Albert suggested its name ? the Victoria Cross. The Victoria Cross was meant to have a simple design though in an era when medals for bravery were anything but simple, the design won few friends in the media of the time. ?The Times? called the medal "poor looking and mean in the extreme.? The first one was made to the specifications of Prince Albert who wanted a ?simple cross?. It is said that Victoria was delighted by the final version ? she added a V to link the medal ribbon to the medal itself. The bronze for the Victoria Cross came from a captured Chinese-made cannon used by the Russians at Sebastopol during the Crimean War. What is left of the metal is kept at the army base DSDC Donnington, in Telford, Shropshire. Today, there is only enough metal left for 80 more medals. The London jewellers Hancocks, based in the Burlington Arcade in London, make the medals. The bronze has always been unstable to work with as it as already been worked on when the cannon was made. Hancock?s have seven medals in storage but without the name and rank of the recipient