Vanity Fair UK - 10.2019

Rolex Submariner

By NICHOLAS FOULKES

Diving Watches

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC ARCHIVE; DAVID E. SCHERMA

N/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION VIA

GETTY IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES (MOUNTBATTEN);

COURTESY OF CHRISTIE’S (ROLEX OYSTER)

had hitherto adorned Rolex’s

waterproof watches, was to be

removed from the dial of this

timepiece. The Pièce Rebikoff

was to be much more than a

watch made to resist the ingress

of moisture; it was a watch

designed for the world beneath

the waves. It was to carry the

name “Submariner”. A legend

had been born.

After that, events moved

apace. From June until October,

Rebikoff and his team from the

Institute for Deep Sea Research

tested the watch exhaustively.

It was a very busy summer;

132 dives were undertaken

overall, at depths between 12 and

60 metres in waters ranging

from a chilly 12°C to an almost

tropical 28°C.

And, as Rebikoff ’s tests were

nearing their end, further

impetus was added on

September 30, 1953. In the

waters off Naples the Tr i e s t e, a

bathyscaphe captained by Swiss

scientist and explorer Auguste

Piccard—a crazy-haired friend

of Einstein and the model for

Hergé’s Professor Calculus in

the Tintin books—dived to a

depth of over 3,150 metres with a

Rolex attached outside. Upon

returning to the surface, Piccard

telegraphed Geneva: “Watch

perfectly resists dive 3,150

metres best wishes—Piccard.”

Rebikoff was more expansive in

his records, even reporting

when one of the watches

dropped onto the concrete

quay. “Despite this very

violent shock, the watch showed

no sign of alteration to the

precision of its running.” The

only visible damage was a flake

of luminous material falling

from the minute hand.

Other than that, Rebikoff

could find little to fault. After

“ N

o cables or hoses

connect the

Aqualunger to

the upper world. No heavy armor

weighs him down. Tanks

strapped upon his back feed him

compressed air in amounts

carefully regulated to equalise

the pressure within his body to

the pressure of the sea without.

In shallow water or in deep, he

feels its weight upon him no

more than do the fish that flicker

shyly past him.” In October 1952,

National Geographic introduced

its readers to scuba diving.

Invented by Jacques Cousteau

in 1943, the aqualung had

revolutionised man’s

relationship with the world

under the waves. Prior to this,

divers’ freedom underwater had

been restricted either by the

capacity of their lungs or by

cumbersome diving suits.

By the beginning of the 1950s,

aqualung diving had become

something of a craze on the Côte

d’Azur. One early enthusiast was

Rene Jeanneret, the then

marketing director of Rolex. A

former advertising man, he had

been made a director of Rolex in

1945 and was responsible for the

brand’s glamorous and high-

profile postwar image. He had a

gift for understanding the

zeitgeist, so his role soon

extended beyond advertising

watches to participating in their

conception and creation.

Rolex did not have a scuba

diving or aqualung specific

timepiece in its repertoire;

however, it had the technological

know-how, the manufacturing

capacity and the pedigree.

Rolex’s record in waterproof

horology was unique. Channel

swimmer Mercedes Gleitze had

famously worn a Rolex in the

1920s; the brand had supplied

watches to the Italian naval

outfitter Panerai during the

1930s; and during the war, Lord

Mountbatten had been among

the many servicemen to benefit

from Rolex’s water resistance.

In the early 1950s, the

underwater world captured the

public imagination in the way

that space travel would in the

following decade. In the same

year that National Geographic

wrote about Commander

Cousteau, diver and engineer

Dimitri Rebikoff had published

L’ Exploration Sous Marine.

Rebikoff was also a diving chum

of Jeanneret and seemed the

ideal person to test prototypes of

a new watch that the latter was

thinking of launching—under

the name “Frogman”. Rolex

founder Hans Wilsdorf agreed

with everything but the name

and greenlit the project. At a

meeting of the board of Rolex in

1953, the criteria for what was

then known as the “Pièce

Rebikoff ” were established.

At around the same time,

Jeanneret hit upon what he

thought was an appropriate

name. The word “Oyster”, which

VANITY FAIR ON TIME AUTUMN 2019

Above: a Rolex

advert featuring

Jacques

Cousteau.

Below from left:

Lord Louis

Mountbatten in

1943; Lord

Mountbatten’s

Rolex Oyster

Perpetual

Bubbleback

[Ref. 2940]

58