King Gives Personal Gift of Ship’s Bell From WW2 Submarine HMS Trump to President at White House Dinner

U.S. President Donald Trump was presented the ship’s bell from Second World War Anglo-Australian submarine HMS Trump by King Charles III at the White House banquet, where the President hailed the shared “audacity” of the Anglo-Saxon people that drove the British to conquer the seas and the Americans to conquer the moon.

The key set-piece event of the state visit to the United States by King Charles III and the Queen Consort Camilla, the state dinner at the White House saw the King and his host, President Donald Trump speak of the unique bond between the British and American peoples, and the giving of a unique gift.

Always a formal event, this was cranked up a notch again by the dinner being in white tie — the most formal Western dress code, a notch up from dinner jacket or tuxedo — which has been unusual for U.S. state banquets in recent years. Giving a speech of thanks before dinner was served, King Charles III also paid tribute to the American security services, thanking them for preventing a shooting at the White House Correspondent’s Association dinner on Saturday.

Noting this attempt on the President’s life and the others that preceded it, the King said  Trump’s response to the repeated assassination attempts is a phlegmatic, old-school British “Keep Calm and Carry On”. The speech was peppered with jokes and humour, including the monarch making note of the present state of the East Wing for the ballroom construction project with the quip: “I’m sorry to say we British, of course, made our own small attempt at real estate redevelopment of the White House in 1814”.

Presenting a “personal gift” to the President, King Charles III unveiled a highly polished Admiralty pattern brass bell, and said:

…speaking of submarine alliances, there was one particular AUKUS predecessor, launched from a UK shipyard in 1944 that served for the majority of her life attached to the fourth submarine squadron in Australia, playing a critical role during the war in the Pacific. Her name? HMS Trump! So tonight Mr President I am delighted to present to you as a personal gift the original bell that hung on the conning tower of your valiant namesake. May it stand as a testimony to our nation’s shared history and shining future. And should you ever need to get hold of us? Just give us a ring!

President Trump stood to admire the bell and responded “it’s so beautiful”. HMS Trump was a Triton-class diesel-electric submarine laid down in 1942 and commissioned in 1944, and sank several Japanese ships in the Pacific. After the war it served with the Royal Australian Navy, and may have had a ship’s motto of “I Triumph”.

HMS Trump as built during the Second World War / Imperial War Museum / Image: IWM (FL 3478)

HMS Trump in Australia after a post-war modernisation and rebuild in 1963 / Imperial War Museum / Image: IWM (HU 130024)

In President Trump’s speech, he returned to the themes explored earlier in the day in his landmark White House lawn address to the Royal couple, welcoming them to America with a defence of America’s Anglo-Saxon history. At the dinner, the President said:

…it’s only natural that Americans begin this commemoration by paying tribute to the transcendent bond that we share with the nation that Thomas Jefferson himself called our ‘mother country’… from English towns and Scottish hills, Welsh mountains and Irish villages, a people unique in history sailed across the mighty Atlantic to settle and civilise this continent in the name of God, King, and country.

They called it ‘New England’ and meant that very literally. The first Americas saw themselves as freemen carrying forward the central liberties and ancient rights of the Anglo-Saxons into this new and beautiful world. In the eyes of America’s founders our War of Independence was fought not to reject this heritage but to reclaim it and perfect it.

As the founding father George Mason wrote, ‘we claim nothing but the liberty and privileges as Englishmen, in the same Degree, as if we had still continued among our Brethren in Great Britain’. The Declaration of Independence was a miracle for the ages which sprked a far-reaching revolution in self-government and human freedom. And although the political bonds between the United States and Great Britain were dissolved, they thought, on July 4th 1776 the more powerful strands of memory, culture, and identity proved unbreakable in any conflict and grew into a friendship unlike any other on earth.

President Trump particularly cited the shared “nobility of spirit and heroic soul” that Anglo America and Britain have in common, saying that “same audacity that called a small island kingdom to rule the seven seas” also drove Americans to conquer the “Wild West”. President Trump linked the spirit of American troops in the modern era to the English Crusaders of a millennia ago and said: “the men who planted the American flag on the moon carried in them the same hunger for adventure and achievement as those who raised the Union Jack above Antarctica and [carried] the St George’s Cross all around the globe”.

He said:

…history has known no more powerful force than the combination of American patriotism and British pride. The British Empire which began here in America certainly did not end here, the sons and daughters of the British Isles went on to found more countries and spread more civilisation than any nation before. They built an English-speaking world upon which the sun never sets, and provides an example to which free people shall always turn.

The state visit continues on Wednesday. Thing King and Queen are due to travel to New York where they will attend a memorial event for the September 11th attack with Mayor Mamdani, and on Thursday will visit events celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in Virginia.