Royal Reunion

He then shouted orders for the crew to unfurl the tall ship's sails.

"Set the fore course!" Speth cried, and the foremost sail tumbled down. "Set the main course! Give the salute!"

The cannon boomed four times. "It's quite a noise," the queen said, according to several bystanders.

At Historic Jamestowne, chief archaeologist William M. Kelso, of the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities (APVA), waited nervously for the queen.

It was Kelso who discovered the fort's site in 1994, when most other archaeologists believed its remains had been washed into the river.

He said he'd have about 20 minutes to explain 12 years of recent archaeology to her. "It's a lot to tell," he said.

At the archaeological site, Schmidt and fellow APVA archaeologist Luke Pecoraro noted that they had excavated down to the level of the 1600s. "It's definitely a once-in-a-lifetime experience for an archaeologist," Pecoraro said. "It's not often that you have a head of state visit an archaeological site."

At the dig site, Kelso and Schmidt explained what was being excavated inside the perimeter of the original triangular fort.

The queen appeared interested, Kelso said later, but was quiet.

Schmidt was showing the queen an old pipe bowl that had just been unearthed, when, he said, it dawned on him that he should welcome her to the past. She thanked him and noted that the site was greatly changed in 50 years, he said.

At the Governor's Palace in Williamsburg, the queen, who had changed from her morning attire into a lilac overcoat and matching hat with turquoise trim, lunched outdoors with 400 others on rockfish, Virginia ham, salad and a lemon cloud tart. "We rehearsed the meal a couple times until we got the flavor right," said Colonial Williamsburg's executive chef, Hans Schadler. "There's got to be zero defects."

At William and Mary, the queen emerged at 2:45 p.m. on the portico of the college's historic Wren building to thunderous applause from thousands of students. College President Gene R. Nichol welcomed her with a nod to the college's historic ties with England. Set on a lush campus in Williamsburg, the college was born in 1693 when King William III and Queen Mary II granted it a royal charter.