King Charles looks back on one of his most daring adventures at the age of 26.
In an upcoming ITV documentary, the monarch, now 77, looks back on his historic 10-day trip to the Arctic in 1975, a journey that shaped his lifelong passion for the environment. Environmentalist Steve Backshall recently retraced the king’s footsteps, examining the impact of climate change 50 years on.
A short teaser shared by the royal family’s official Instagram page showed Her Majesty, joined by Backshall at the palace, watching clips and photos 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 kind of fun to come back with the hat,” he told Backshall, adding: “I thought [it was] a chance to have fun.
Another moment showed Charles, then Prince of Wales, emerging from his tent in his costume which he had inflated with air. “I blew the thing up, to see how far it would go,” he recalled as Backshall and the king burst into laughter.
Elsewhere in the documentary, King, who has cancer, makes a heartbreaking comment about his current state of health. “Thank God I was younger then,” 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 the Inuit, the indigenous people of the Arctic, and learned from them about 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 physician, author and diver. According to his 2023 account of the historic dive, MacInnis revealed that it was he who planted the bowler hat on the seabed 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 departed gracefully, a trail of bubbles behind him, towards the diving hole,” MacInnis wrote.
