The King will conclude his Bermuda visit by officially launching the UK Space Agency’s (UKSA) Project Nova, an initiative to track space debris. Charles is scheduled to visit a new UKSA observatory on the island, where he will learn about plans for a global network of telescopes across five sites, monitoring old satellites, rocket stages, and other orbiting objects.
Later on his final day, His Majesty will open the new Great Bay Coast Guard Station. There, he will be briefed on the Royal Bermuda Regiment’s Coast Guard’s vital work protecting the island’s territorial waters and marine environment, and view their new unmanned underwater and aerial vehicles.
Young people from the Junior Leader programme will discuss their involvement with the scheme and before leaving the King will award operational service medals to five members of the regiment for their commitment to the protection of the island.
On Friday evening the King attended a garden party and said to guests: “I am told to my amazement it is also the first time in Bermuda’s 400-year history that the islands have received a reigning King.
“I am terribly sorry it has taken so long!”
The event was staged at Government House, where the King has been staying during his three-day visit and which has been refurbished so recently he told guests that it still smells of fresh paint.
Raising a toast to Bermuda at the garden party, the King said: “I need hardly say that Bermuda, like all the Overseas Territories, is a most cherished and important member of the British family – with a friendship as solid as this so-called ‘Rock’.”
The King was also shown slavery artefacts from Bermuda’s past as he celebrated the island’s culture, people and achievements.
Charles toured an exhibition space during a whirlwind series of events across the island paradise and viewed items relating to the transatlantic slave trade, including neck irons from the 1500s.
The head of state received a warm welcome from thousands of well-wishers in the heart of the British overseas territory’s former capital, St George’s, during a ceremonial greeting full of military pomp.
He then travelled from end-to-end of the island, meeting youth groups, conservationists of the future, the territory’s leaders and even Bermuda-born Michael Frith – designer of many of the Muppets characters – and his wife, Kathryn Mullen.
Charles viewed the small but stark display at the 1850 Ordnance House – part of the National Museum of Bermuda – that traced the darker moments in the island’s history, with a cabinet dedicated to trade, slavery and conquest.
