Britain immediately protested the airing of the footage, saying it was "completely unacceptable for these pictures to be shown on television".

"Obviously we trespassed into their waters," sailor Faye Turney, 26, said on the footage broadcast by Al-Alam, an Arabic-language, Iranian state-run television station that is carried across the Middle East by satellite. "They were very friendly and very hospitable, very thoughtful, nice people. They explained to us why we've been arrested, there was no harm, no aggression," she said.