King Charles exposed to cruel slave artefacts in Bermuda

King Charles of Britain was given a rousing welcome on a day trip to Bermuda on Friday, May 1, but as head of state of the United Kingdom, he was also exposed to the genocidal brutality of the transatlantic slave trade for which Britain has refused to pay reparations.

The King arrived on the mid-Atlantic island southeast of the Carolinas to a mixed local welcome from government officials, the cultural community, and the thousands of mostly white Britons who make up more than a third of the dependency’s population.

On his itinerary, also, was a trip to the 1850 Ordnance House, where he was exposed to drawings of the type of crude neck irons that British slave traders had used to shackle Africans being shipped to the western hemisphere to work on plantations.

He did not really speak to the press while viewing the artefacts at the Bermudan museum, but did apologize to attendees at a garden party later for the fact that it had taken hundreds of years for a monarch to visit the mid-Atlantic British dependency.

 “I am told to my amazement that it is the first time in Bermuda’s 400-year history that the islands have actually received a reigning king. I am terribly sorry it has taken so long,” he said. He was last on the island, about 600 miles southeast of the American Carolinas, 56 years ago as a young Prince of Wales.

The King had flown to Bermuda after wrapping up a rather hectic state visit to the US, where he had addressed both houses of the US Congress and had visited New York and Virginia as well.

His visit to the museum in Bermuda, which is planning to apply for full membership in the 15-nation Caribbean Community, comes as the grouping is gearing up for a protracted fight to make Britain and other former European slave trading nations pay for the sins of the slave trade.

The visit also came just days after the same UK had abstained from supporting a non-binding United Nations resolution declaring the slave trade as the “gravest crime against humanity.” The resolution was spearheaded by Ghana and supported by 123 countries. Fifty-two nations abstained, including Britain.

Caribbean governments have already sent demand letters to several European nations and had retained a British law firm to assess its case. The feedback, officials say, is that the region has a solid case that it should pursue. Before leaving the King spoke of previous visits by other royals.

“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. For my family in particular, Bermuda has a distinct fond resonance. Sadly, increasingly few of us are old enough to remember that my mother and father, the late Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh, made Bermuda the first stop in their Coronation Tour in 1953.”