HAMILTON, Bermuda: King Charles III spent a day in the British island territory of Bermuda on Friday after a high-stakes visit to the United States where he sought to heal strained ties between Washington and London.
It was the first visit by a British king to Bermuda in its 400-year history, Charles said -- a history that involved making the archipelago a maritime hub of Britain’s transatlantic slave trade, which the monarchy has been pressured to address.
The king toured a museum exhibit on the slave trade and watched a dance with roots in the era.
“I’m told, to my amazement, it is also the first time in Bermuda’s 400 year history, the islands have actually received a reigning king,” Charles said during a reception at Government House in Bermuda’s capital of Hamilton. “So I’m terribly sorry it has taken so long.”
Charles was visiting the archipelago without Queen Camilla, who had accompanied him to the United States.
Early in the day the British monarch greeted a line of schoolchildren, pausing to chat with them, on the steps of the whitewashed St. Peter’s Church in St. George’s, the Atlantic Ocean territory’s first English settlement.
