Rear Admiral Frederick Thomas Pelham, CB (2 August 1808 – 21 June 1861) was a Royal Navy officer who went on to be Second Naval Lord.

[2] At the suggestion of Sir Hyde Parker,[3] he served as private secretary to the first Lord of the Admiralty, the Duke of Northumberland,[2] from March to December 1852, working against a government keen to keep defence spending down, against his own brother Lord Chichester's politics and connections with Sir Francis Baring, and against the political secretary Stafford O'Brien (testifying to the 1853 select committee checking O'Brien's handling of patronage in dockyard appointments).

[3] He was made commander of the Portsmouth steam reserve in 1853, participating at Bomarsund and other episodes of the 1854 Baltic campaign in that role from his flagship HMS Blenheim.

[2] During the construction of HMS Exmouth he was appointed her commander,[2] but this putative post was cancelled when his friend Richard Saunders Dundas selected him for the second Baltic campaign as captain of the fleet.

[2] In that role he headed the attack on Sveaborg (8–10 August), though a surveying officer on the expedition, Captain Bartholomew James Sulivan, blamed Pelham for making Dundas overcautious.