King Charles looks back on one of his most daring adventures as a 26-year-old.
In an upcoming ITV documentary, the monarch, now 77, looks back on his historic 10-day trip to the Arctic in 1975, a trip that shaped his lifelong passion for the environment. Environmentalist Steve Backshall recently retraced the King’s footsteps and looked at the impact of climate change 50 years on.
A short teaser shared by the royal family’s official Instagram page showed His Majesty, along with Backshall at the palace, watching clips and images from the original 1975 expedition, including the most iconic moment: Charles emerging from a deep dive inexplicably wearing a bowler hat over his diving suit.
“I thought it would be quite fun to come back with the hat on,” he told Backshall, adding: “I thought [it was] a chance to fool around.”
Another moment showed Charles, then the Prince of Wales, emerging from his tent in his suit, blown up. “I blew the thing up, see how far it would go,” he recalled, as both Backshall and the King burst into laughter.
Elsewhere in the documentary, the cancer-stricken king makes a heartbreaking comment about his current health. “Thank God I was younger in those days,” he said of his expedition. “I could never have survived it now,” he added with a laugh.
During the 10-day expedition, Charles interacted with and learned from the Inuit – the indigenous people of the Arctic – about the local culture, how to coexist with nature, their relationship with their sled dogs and much more.
But the bowler hat moment stood out for its sheer absurdity. Charles’ diving partner was Dr. Joe MacInnis, a Canadian doctor, author and diver. According to his 2023 account of the historic dive, MacInnis revealed that he was the one who planted the bowler hat on the ocean floor during a previous dive. When he picked it up and put it on, Charles was amused.
“He loved it, and he took the bowler hat … and then he just gracefully walked away, a trail of bubbles behind him, and headed up toward the diving hole,” MacInnis wrote.
