“The colour blue really suited Pierce,” remembers Oscar-winning costume designer Lindy Hemming. “I was dressing him in lots of blue shirts and the blue bezel and dial of the Omega Seamaster matched perfectly. Plus, blue suited Commander Bond’s naval background.”
As a swap from the Rolex Submariner – James Bond’s default alternative since Dr No bar a couple of doubtful meanderings into digital Seikos within the seventies – Hemming’s alternative of the Omega Seamaster 300 was excellent in each approach. “Beautiful,” even, based on Vesper Lynd in the course of the dining-car scene in On line casino Royale, by comparability to the watch she blithely assumes 007’s sort would put on (Rolex, clearly).
It’s not simply the blue although, Lindy. As excellent as Omega’s professional-spec diving watch suited Mr Brosnan’s twinkling eyes and deck uniform when she first dressed him for Goldeneye all the way in which again in 1995, the Seamaster actually is the default alternative for Britain’s most interesting seamen, albeit these whose operational bonuses can afford it. For everybody else, right here’s all the pieces you could know in regards to the Seamaster 300, from its heritage to probably the most wanted fashions in the present day.
Omega’s Navy Pedigree
At the moment, the Royal Navy’s Particular Boat Service – notoriously more durable than their landlubber SAS contemporaries are virtually fully kitted out with specifically engraved, proudly war-torn Seamaster 300 Professionals. However the Swiss model’s service roots prolong again a lot additional. Rugged, legible, extremely water resistant, chronometer-level precision Omega timepieces have been kitted-out to British servicemen and pilots virtually solely throughout World Struggle II. See the wrist of Tom Hardy’s Spitfire pilot in Dunkirk for additional cinematic proof of that specific pedigree.
Struggle, in spite of everything, accelerates technological innovation, as this 12 months’s Seventieth-anniversary Seamaster reissues remind us. Between 1940 and 1945, Omega delivered greater than 110,000 timepieces to the British Ministry of Defence. After the battle, as we steadily progressed by way of the jet age towards the nuclear age and eventually the house race, this breathless interval of innovation discovered Omega on the peak of its engineering creativity.
It responded to the demand for a timepiece with the identical sturdy know-how and dependable conception as its navy efforts, however extra aesthetically suited to a extra educational existence. To not point out the burgeoning craze for SCUBA diving, heightened by the garlanded cinematic exploits of Jacques Cousteau.
Launched in 1948, the Seamaster line was Omega’s first official ‘family’ of watches. Modelled on the ‘Watch. Wrist. Waterproof.’ military-spec items made for the MoD, these extra classically designed timepieces boasted higher water-resistance than their navy counterparts due to the novel use of O-ring gasket know-how. Beforehand, water resistant watches relied on lead or shellac gaskets, which have been simply affected by a temperature change – one thing, that tends to occur once you dive deeper and deeper.
Omega turned to the hatches on submarines used in the course of the battle for inspiration and got here up with a resilient rubber seal within the Seamaster’s closing case design. This remained intact at depths of as much as 60 meters and temperature ranges between –40 levels and 50 levels Celsius. Briefly, it labored.
The Seamaster’s Technological Improvements
That each one mentioned, with due respect to Bond’s authentic alternative of wristwear, the Rolex Submariner was fast to blow Omega fully out of the water as quickly as 1953. The immortal, legendary and quite-simply peerless diving watch had the entire package deal from the outset: screw-down crown, unidirectional rotating dive-time bezel, 300-metre water resistance… Bar the trendy Tudor Pelagos and the Sub’s early rival, Blancpain’s Fifty Fathoms, there was and can be little contest. Certain sufficient, the souped-up Rolex ‘Mil-Sub’ bought in early as first alternative for the British Navy’s crack frogmen in the course of the fifties and seventies.
By 1957, nevertheless, Omega bought again within the recreation with not one however three new ‘Master’ watches, match for land, sea and air. Alongside the Speedmaster (the one watch that’s been on the Moon) and the Railmaster was an overdue, totally completed thinking-man’s various to the Sub’: the Seamaster 300, full with all of the above and still-standard diving-watch requisites. A broad-arrow hours hand was neatly counterbalanced by its luminous arrow-shaped hour indexes. The next 12 months, impressed by the historic markings on gondolas in Venice, the Seahorse grew to become the image of the Seamaster, engraved on its caseback and nonetheless featured in the present day on a collection of ‘Professional’ fashions.
The Omega Seamaster 300 At the moment
It’s now been 25 years for the reason that blue-bezelled iteration everyone knows greatest was launched – the one which Lindy Hemming matched so completely to Brosnan’s excellent nineties Bond. Since 1993, the Seamaster Skilled Diver 300M has grow to be a lot of an embedded, trendy basic that one explicit instance is to be seen completely peeping from the wrist of a sure Duke of Cambridge every so often. Wills even wore it to his brother’s marriage ceremony – which is arguably a little bit of a sartorial no-no, however who’re we to argue with His Royal Highness? Let’s not neglect his personal naval expertise, in spite of everything.
Cherished for its vibrant design and oceangoing know-how, the unique 300M Skilled signalled Omega’s triumphant return to the world of diving watches after a dry-docked eighties and singlehandedly ignited the continuing partnership with Her Majesty’s Secret Service. After all, there have been many variations on the Seamaster over time, with the Aqua Terra and Planet Ocean ranges being explicit highlights – the latter of which turns issues up 300 extra notches, to 600 metres’ water resistance – however the Skilled stays the flagship.
The Latest Seamaster 300M Skilled
For 2018 Omega celebrates 25 years since its trendy reboot, introducing a daring new Skilled Diver 300M assortment with a complete facelift numbering 14 completely different fashions, together with six in chrome steel and eight in a mix of chrome steel and gold (the bi-metal watch development is again, for those who hadn’t observed, eighties followers).
Now sized up from 41mm to a barely extra up to date 42 mm, maintaining the skeletonised palms and wavy dial sample so well-liked within the 1993 authentic, the actual Bond-worthy gadgetry is whirring away inside. And it’s all right down to innovation that’ll defend the fragile mechanics from the kind of ultra-magnetism knocking about your common Bond villain’s lair.
The Motion
The in-house-manufactured Grasp Chronometer Calibre 8800 motion immediately accelerates issues into unprecedented realms of precision, efficiency and magnetic resistance. Seamaster devotees will know that the vary has been host to a number of actions over time, together with the ETA-based Omega Caliber 1120 and, most lately, the 2500, which is basically primarily based on the identical authentic motion although significantly modified by Omega to incorporate its lubricant-free Co-Axial escapement.
With the brand new Seamaster 300M using the Grasp Chronometer 8800, Omega is continuous its brand-wide programme phasing-out older actions in favour of its extra cutting-edge in-house {hardware}, repositioning itself as a real, evenly outfitted rival to Rolex, because it as soon as was again within the day.
So what’s so cutting-edge in regards to the 8800? Effectively, with the common-or-garden mechanical watch, magnetic fields are nonetheless Public Enemy No. 1 to the ferrous elements ticking inside, sticking them collectively or sending them out of whack. In response to worldwide customary ISO 764, watches should resist exposition to a direct present magnetic area of 4,800 Amperes per metre – in regards to the energy of the magnet in your fridge door.
The equal to 4,800 A/m is about 60 Gauss, which makes Omega’s ticking cocktail of intelligent alloys and silicon terribly overqualified: its new certification by the Swiss metrology institute, METAS calls for a resistance up from 60 to fifteen,000 (sure, 15,000) Gauss – sufficient to withstand the affect of a neodymium magnet, the strongest everlasting magnet commercially accessible, discovered in every single place from exhausting disks to MRI scanners. And laser-beam torture units, presumably.
Dive in, chaps. The Seamaster has by no means felt finer.
At the moment’s Finest Omega Seamaster 300 Fashions
Mannequin Quantity: 212.30.41.20.03.001
As masculine as you’d anticipate from James Bond’s watch of alternative, this does what few diving watches can handle in that it features as a correct high-spec device watch, whereas additionally being (simply) good sufficient for extra dressed-up events. (Although not with the tuxedo. Actually, 007.)
Mannequin Quantity: 233.30.41.21.01.001
Launched in 2017, this sixtieth anniversary piece pays very respectful tribute to a fifties mannequin, however below the floor is all of the technical diving tech that Omega has honed within the many years since. A licensed chronometer with a screw-in crown, that is type and performance in near-perfect concord.
Mannequin Quantity: 233.92.41.21.03.001
This model, on a leather-based strap, is one other vintage-looking Seamaster, the sand-blasted blue dial deep sufficient to need to dive proper in. As with the opposite fashions within the household, it has a ceramic rotating bezel to assist monitor your time underwater.
Mannequin Quantity: 233.20.41.21.01.001
Bimetal watches are one thing of a Marmite model however they’re positively trending. Right here, the good-looking rose gold brings the sober chrome steel to life, whereas below all of the glitz and glamour sits the identical hard-working motion as you’ll discover throughout the Seamaster vary.
