He said an Iranian Revolutionary Guard gunboat moved close by and its armed personnel made "very overt gestures''. The boarding party commander ordered the Australians to reboard the cargo ship.

"He got his boarding party back on to the ship and established a very credible and appropriate defensive position,'' Commodore Gilmore told reporters in Canberra. The BBC reported earlier today that Iranian naval forces tried to capture the boarding team, but were repelled in the face of machine guns and "highly colourful language". Quoting a "military source", BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner reported Iranian forces made a concerted attempt to seize a boarding party from the Royal Australian Navy and that the Australians "were having none of it".

"The BBC has been told the Australians re-boarded the vessel they had just searched," Gardner reports, "aimed their machine guns at the approaching Iranians, and warned them to back off, using what was said to be 'highly colourful language'. "The Iranians withdrew, and the Australians were reportedly lifted off the ship by one of their own helicopters."

Speaking to the ABC today, Gardner said the Australian encounter was similar to that in which 15 Britons were captured in march of this year. "What I've been told by several sources, military sources, [is that] there was a similar encounter, in this case between the Royal Australian Navy and Iranian gunboats, some months ago, or at least some months prior to the seizing of the British sailors,'' Gardner told ABC Radio. "The Australians escaped capture by climbing back on board the ship they'd just searched. I'm told that they set up their weapons.

"No shots were exchanged but the Iranians backed off and the Australians were able to get helicoptered off that ship and they didn't get captured.'' He did not mention the name of the Australian ship. Australian ships rotate through duties in the Gulf, chiefly searching ships.

"What I'm hearing is that it was a pretty robust attitude by the Australians,'' Gardner told the ABC. "The words that somebody said to me was that they used pretty colourful language but I'm sure that alone didn't make the Iranians back off. "They reacted, I'm told, incredibly quickly, whereas the Brits were caught at their most vulnerable moment, climbing down off the ship [and] getting into their boats.''

Gardner said the British should be embarrassed about the incident but the issue was whether military intelligence had been passed on. "The point of this story is not that the Aussies were fantastically brave and the Brits were a bunch of cowards, although I'm sure some people will interpret [it that way],'' he said.

"Lessons should have been drawn from what happened to the Australian crew.'' Click here for the BBC report. - smh.com.au / AAP