Hamilton (Bermuda) (AFP) - 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.

The 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.

“Thank you for coming,” said one crowd member who held a miniature Union Jack flag.

“Get home safe,” said another member of the hundreds-strong crowd gathered in King’s Square.

One well-wisher wore a plastic crown speckled with imitation jewels as she filmed the gathering on her cell phone after a 21-gun salute.

Charles received a Royal Salute and the Royal Bermuda Regiment’s band played the national anthem before setting a more relaxed tone with Bob Marley and the Wailers’ song “Jamming.”

In Sandys Parish, the royal party was treated to dances by Gombeys – traditional dancers who maintain a folklore with African, Caribbean and Native American influences.

Their outfits featured bells symbolizing the chains that bound enslaved people, and tiny mirrors to ward off evil spirits.

They also wore painted masks, a tradition rooted in slavery when slaves were forbidden from public dancing.

While there, Charles also took in a museum exhibit on the transatlantic slave trade.

In a more relaxed moment of his tour, Charles visited Trunk Island, an island in Bermuda’s Harrington Sound where the local zoological society runs education programs.

Long a vocal conservationist, Charles appeared “right at home” on the island, Bermuda Zoological Society spokeswoman Robyn Bardgett told AFP, adding it was clear his passion for the environment was “completely genuine.”

Charles asked a society staff member “are you getting the message through?”

The king took “real time to chat with them about what (members) are learning about coral reefs,” Bardgett added.

Charles’s first visit to a British overseas territory as sovereign comes after a packed US itinerary for the king and Queen Camilla, who did not make the trip to Bermuda.

- Trump’s ‘greatest king’ -

The four-day US visit was largely seen as a success, with President Donald Trump serving as a solicitous host who honored the royal couple with a white-tie banquet at the White House.

“He’s a great king – the greatest king, in my book,” Trump told reporters as they said farewell.

Soon after, Trump announced he was removing tariffs on Scottish whisky “in honor” of Charles and Camilla.

The centerpiece of the US trip was Charles’s speech Tuesday to Congress, the first by a British monarch since Queen Elizabeth II in 1991.

The address was warmly received, even as Charles touched on subjects from climate change and the need for restraints on presidential power to the importance of NATO and defense of Ukraine – sensitive issues for the US president.

The 77-year-old king skirted around tensions between Trump and Prime Minister Keir Starmer over Britain’s refusal to join the war against Iran, insisting the partnership between the two countries was “born out of dispute, but no less strong for it.”

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