The Fifty Fathoms may not quite be to Blancpain what the Royal Oak is to Audemars Piguet, or what the Nautilus is to Patek Philippe – it still gets outsold by dressier sister collection, the Villeret – but the dive watch has become, almost by proxy, the brand’s most emblematic timepiece. Highly legible, tough as nails, and featuring an anti-magnetic inner case and unidirectional bezel, the Fifty Fathoms boasted almost all of the criteria that would inform the IOS when it was coming up with a standardisation for dive watches four decades later. Working with Maloubier, Blancpain’s CEO Jean-Jacques Fiechter, a keen diver himself, came up with the Fifty Fathoms – a watch named after the maximum depth to which it was then safely possible to dive (around 91 metres). After approaching several larger watchmakers, Blancpain agreed to take on the challenge.
Unable to find what they were after, their leader, Bob Maloubier, sketched the sort of thing they were looking for. In the early 1950s, an elite team of French frogmen wanted a watch they could take with them underwater. In 2019, three prototypes descended to 10,935 metres while strapped to the hull of a James Cameron-piloted Deepsea Challenger submersible (pipping, by 19 metres, a record set by Rolex in 1960). *The record for the deepest a watch has ever dived, by the way, is held by Omega’s Seamaster Planet Ocean Ultra Deep. To wit, a dive watch must be able to function 100 metres below water allow a diver to measure periods of elapsed times (hence rotating minute bezels) indicate that the watch is running (usually via a sweeping seconds hand) and be visible in the dark from a distance of 25 centimetres (there’s other stuff, but it gets a bit techie).ħ0 years since the emergence (submergence?) of the modern dive watch, these are the greatest (and latest versions thereof) of horology’s most iconic underwater explorers…
Since 1996, to call itself a dive watch, a timepiece must meet criteria laid down by the International Organisation of Standardisation. All three watches were characterised by robust cases, highly-legible indices, innovative crown-locking systems and uni-directional bezels etched with time intervals, which could be used to calculate time elapsed underwater.
While there had been waterproof watches prior to the 1950s – during the ’20s and ’30s, Rolex, Cartier, Omega and Panerai had all devised ways of keeping water out of watches through the use of special cases and crowns – the modern dive watch, that is to say, a watch that could withstand the pressures of the sort of deep-sea diving that followed the advent of SCUBA in 1943 (co-created by our friend Cousteau, don’t you know), only materialised in 1953 – when Blancpain, Rolex and a company called Zodiac turned up to the same party all at once.ĭiffering in their approach stylistically, although not all that much, really, the Blancpain Fifty Fathoms, Rolex Submariner and Zodiac Sea Wolf (I know, great name, right?) took a question of function and answered in near identical form. He’s been photographed wearing his Omega Seamaster on occasions as varied as helicopter rescue missions, hospital visits and his wedding day.Ī brief history. The robust nature and handsome ruggedness of the dive watch has made it the ultimate, go-anywhere timepiece. They speak to the pioneering adventures of underwater filmmaker Jacques Cousteau (who, along with Submariners, had a fondness for Blancpain Fifty Fathoms and at least one Doxa Sub 300). For decades, dive watches have allowed us to channel our inner James Bond (a Rolex Submariner in the books an Omega Seamaster since 1995 in the films). Then again, all of this is beside the point, isn’t it?*ĭive watches transcended the niche market or which they were intended almost as soon as they were invented. Ditto Rolex’s Deepsea (3,900 metres) and Hublot’s King Power Diver (4,000 metres). Which still makes the fact that Tag Heuer’s Aquaracer Superdiver 1000 will continue to tick to a depth of 1,000 metres properly impressive. In the 30 years since then no one has dived deeper than that legendary Greek-Frenchmen.
That record was set by Théo Mavrostomos in 1992. The deepest anyone has ever dived is 701 metres.
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