Rolex Deep Sea Special

In one of the greatest adventures in horological history, Captain Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard took the 1960 Rolex Deep Sea Special 10,916 metres below the sea.

  • Words: Avaunt

It’s almost a century since Rolex developed the first waterproof watch, the 1926 Rolex Oyster – triumphantly demonstrated by female swimmer Mercedes Gleitze when she swam the English Channel. It says as much about the speed of human progress as it does about Rolex’s pioneering spirit that the company went on to create a 1960 model, the Rolex Deep Sea Special, that was proved to function 10,916 metres under the sea.

The Rolex Deep Sea Special (1960).

In a historic descent, Captain Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard took the Bathyscaphe Trieste into the Mariana Trench – the deepest point in the world’s oceans – with the Rolex Deep Sea Special attached to the outside. In a brief but terrifying moment, a crash rocked the bathyscaphe – later the men discovered that an exterior Plexiglass window had cracked from the pressure. But thankfully the rest of the dive took place without incident.

‘Happy to announce your watch as precise at 11,000 metres down as on the surface.’

Jacques Piccard
The bathyscaphe Trieste, the first manned vessel to have reached the bottom of the Challenger Deep.

Once they had come back to the surface, Piccard sent a telegram to Rolex’s headquarters in Geneva, saying, ‘Happy to announce your watch as precise at 11,000 metres down as on the surface. Best regards, Jacques Piccard.’ Mission accomplished.

Swiss oceanographer Jacques Piccard, the first man (along with Captain Don Walsh) to explore the deepest location on the surface of Earth's crust.

The feat was mirrored half a century later when, in partnership with the National Geographic Society, director James Cameron (Avatar, Titanic took the Rolex Deepsea Challenge with him on his record-breaking 2012 solo dive to the Mariana Trench. In a specially designed submersible that he described as a ‘vertical torpedo’, the Deepsea Challenge was attached to an external robotic arm. The result? Like its predecessor, the Deepsea Challenge emerged from the extreme pressures of the dive unscathed. It sets a challenge to all other deep-sea watches.

Article taken from
Articles

Further Reading

The Anatomy of an Antarctic Explorer

Last December Louis Rudd became the first Briton to cross Antarctica using muscle power alone. Here he describes in precise detail how the 925 mile crossing impacted on each part of his body.

The Big Blue

Three-time world record-breaking freediver Guillaume Néry ranks Neil Armstrong among his heroes. He talks about the joys of defying gravity and his quest for the perfect dive.

Visions of the Year 2000

At the turn of the twentieth century a team of illustrators created their futuristic vision of the birth of the twenty-first century.

Mirrorlands

A shift in the balance of world power means that China and Russia are currently more aligned than at any point since the 1950s. Ed Pulford takes a journey along the border between two superpowers.

Project Coldfeet

A highly risky operation by the CIA to get information from an abandoned Russian drift station in the Arctic involved a helium balloon, an aircraft with horns protruding from its nose, and a flying pig.

Up Close: Ice Fishers

Photographer Aleksey Kondratyev on the generations of Kazakh men who brave temperatures that often reach forty degrees below zero in the hope of catching fish beneath the ice.
Browse by Category