Fishery protection ship HMS Lindisfarne may be approaching the end of her Naval career, but there is no let up for her ship’s company – or for trawler skippers who flout the law.

The Island-class vessel, one of only two left following the decommissioning of HMS Anglesey earlier this month, boarded more than 300 vessels in the 12 months to August, with seven detentions in the same period.

This made her the clear winner of the Jersey Cup, which is awarded annually to the fishery protection vessel which has made the greatest impact over the course of the year.

The cup, previously held by HMS Guernsey, is handed over to the recipient at a ceremony, then returned to its permanent home in a Jersey museum.

Besides her bread-and-butter deployments, often taking her out into the Atlantic or North Sea in foul weather to ensure that UK and European fishery legislation is upheld, Lindisfarne acted as on-scene commander for an extensive search and rescue incident earlier in the summer.

A stowaway aboard a merchant ship had taken his chances early one morning in June and jumped overboard in the Channel, 14 miles south of Beachy Head.

Both the patrol vessel’s boats were lowered and flanked Lindisfarne during the search to triple the area covered, while the merchantman, an inbound Newhaven ferry and the local lifeboat also helped.

The man was spotted by someone on the ferry, but then disappeared from sight again, but a sailor on Lindisfarne spotted him again and he was hauled into a boat and taken to the ship.

He was given emergency first aid until he could be lifted off by helicopter, but despite everyone’s best efforts the man – a 25-year-old from the Ivory Coast – was pronounced dead on arrival at hospital in Eastbourne.

That same afternoon Lindisfarne embarked two MPs from the Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme and continued a mini-patrol to Brixham in Devon, giving them a good idea of what the Fishery Protection Squadron achieves.

During the same period in which she won the Jersey Cup, Lindisfarne visited three foreign ports – Cork, L’Orient and Scheveningen – and ten UK ports at least once; Portland, Brixham, Plymouth, Falmouth, Swansea, Milford Haven, Liverpool, Douglas, North Shields and London.

In three of them – Milford Haven, Brixham and Douglas – she was opened up to visitors, and welcomed more than 1,000 members of the public on board.

Squeezed in between have been the usual training and exercising requirements, making sure that individuals within her ship’s company and the team as a whole are on top of their game.