Middle Passage during the African slave trade.

Held near Fort St. Catherine in St. George's, the ceremony featured the Warner Gombey Group, and descendants of slaves on the Enterprise who chose to be emancipated in Bermuda rather than return to the US.

The Ausar Auset Church performed a libation ceremony designed specifically for Saturday in which names of ancestors were called out.

It was one of several ceremonies in the western hemisphere timed with the main commemoration in New York City.

More than 500 people attended the Harlem ceremony where an aluminium sculpture honouring the people lost during transit from Africa to the Americas.

The sculpture will be lowered into the Atlantic 427 kilometres east of New York Harbour.

Each kilometre represents one of the bodies found in an 18th-century cemetery unearthed in Manhattan, halting after much controversy the construction of an office building in 1991.

Coordinator of the local Middle Passage ceremony, Corin Smith said attendees came from a "good cross section of interests'' and said they were moved by a five minute silence while looking out over the Atlantic.

Mr. Smith said there was also a video presentation of "Through the Doors of No Return'' which is about the slave stations on the coast of Africa.