Iranian military personnel seized 15 Royal Navy personnel during 2007 and held them for 13 days. On 23 March 2007, 15 British Royal Navy personnel, from HMS Cornwall, searching a merchant vessel were surrounded by the Navy of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and subsequently detained off the Iran-Iraq coast. In the course of events, the British forces claimed that the vessel was in Iraqi waters, but the Iranian side insisted that they were in Iran's territorial waters.