The Earl of Wessex will visit the Royal Fleet Auxiliary ship Largs Bay at the naval base on Friday.

The commodore in chief will award the colour to the fleet as a whole, but the amphibious landing ship is one of the reasons it has been praised.

During her first deployment Largs Bay spent December to June in the Caribbean, striking at the transatlantic flow of class A drugs.

She intercepted more than half a tonne of cocaine on her first ever patrol, spent Christmas in Florida's Key West and trained with French marines.

It was just before Christmas that Largs Bay scored her first raiding success, using her Lynx helicopter to investigate a fishing boat eight miles ahead of the ship about 390 miles north-east of Barbados.

In a mission similar to Prince William's recent drugs raid with the Portsmouth frigate HMS Iron Duke, the helicopter approached the boat to see fishermen dumping their cargo into the sea.

It hovered over the bales in failing light while tracking the fleeing smugglers.

RFA Largs Bay's sea boat was then launched, and despite the bales of cocaine being weighted the crew managed to recover 575 kg of it before dark.

They also caught the fishing boat as it tried to get away.