Rolex Oyster watches were good for diving to considerable depths long before the Rolex Submariner saw the light of day. Famous are of course the Rolex Oyster references 2533 and 3646 used by Italian Navy divers of the Decima Flottiglia MAS during the Second World War. Already in 1939, Rolex Oyster Perpetual ‘Bubbleback’ models had a depth rating of real 200 ft/60 m of sea water. In mid 1952, an Italian expedition lead by Bruno Vailati embarked on an adventure to the Red Sea which resulted in the film ‘Sesto Continente’, the first full-length, full-colour underwater documentary in history. In many of the underwater scenes, Bruno Vailati and his fellow divers wore Rolex Oyster Perpetual Ref. 6098 watches, the same model the British expedition that conquered Mount Everest in late May 1953 was equipped with. While no Rolex watch made it to the summit in 1953, the 6098 became the basis for both, the Explorer and the Submariner.

> Click here to go directly to the letter from the Rolex archives confirming the story

A Brief History Of The Rolex Oyster

Hans Wilsdorf, the founder of Rolex, was obsessed with creating the perfect wristwatch that was not only accurate but also protected against dust, perspiration, water, heat and cold. As early as the 1910s, Wilsdorf started using waterproof cases made by Swiss watch case maker François Borgel. A special protective case-in-case with screw-down bezel patented by Jean Finger was introduced in the early 1920s for the Rolex Hermetic. In 1926, finally, Rolex perfected the waterproof wristwatch with the creation of the famous Oyster case consisting of a patented “hermetically sealed” 4-piece casing in combination with a patented screw-down crown.

In 1936, Rolex produced the oversized Oyster Special Ref. 2533 with signature cushion case for the manned torpedo crews of the Italian Navy. These were the very first professional diving tool watches. Since the divers used oxygen rebreathers that were limited to a maximum depth 40 ft/12 m, a guaranteed waterresistance of 100 ft/30 m was more than enough.

Just three years later, as can be seen in the Italian advertisement below, the guaranteed waterresistance of the Rolex Oyster Perpetual (automatic) was increased to 200 ft/60 m.

In the early 1950s, Rolex began working on special diving watches that could withstand unimaginable depths. On the one hand this led to the development of the legendary Rolex Submariner which was tested extensively throughout 1953 and presented to the public at the Basel Mustermesse in May 1954.

Simultaneously the effort culminated in the famous Rolex ‘Deep Sea Special’ models, whose final version withstood the crushing pressure of 16,000 pounds per square inch at the deepest point in the ocean, the Mariana Trench, in January 1960 attached to the outside of the Bathyscaphe ‘Trieste’.

More information about this and other fascinating chapters of Rolex’s history can be found at the end of this write-up in related articles.

A further milestone was the Rolex Sea-Dweller with patented ‘Gas Escape Valve’ or helium release valve specifically developed for saturation diving in late 1967. The Sea-Dweller holds two records for the deepest human offshore and hyperbaric dives with 1,752 ft/534 m and 2,300 ft/701 m respectivelly. One of the earliest examples, a so-called ‘Single Red Sea-Dweller’ or ‘SRSD’ belonging to Canadian explorer Dr. Joe MacInnis made it even into space on the wrist of Canadian astronaut Dr. Dave Williams.

On March 26, 2012, Rolex returned to the Mariana Trench. “Worn” on the robotic arm of James Cameron’s ‘Deepsea Challenger’ deep-diving submersible, the Rolex ‘Deepsea Challenge’ repeated the feat of diving to the deepest point in the ocean and returning the surface alive and ticking.

The Rolex Oyster from 1926 laid the foundation for all of the Rolex diving tool watches to come.

Historical Background

In the 1930s, the Italians became a leading force in underwater exploration which led to the pioneering of underwater warfare, first with slow-running manned torpedoes (Maiale, SLC) and later with frogman units, the so-called Gruppo Gamma (Greek G for guastare = demolish) carrying small explosive devices. After the war, the Italian Navy was prohibited under the Treaty of Paris from having underwater units but the exploits of the special units of the Decima Flottiglia MAS became rapidly the stuff of legends of which the Italians are very proud of. Highly decorated Navy divers like Luigi Ferraro, who as an undercover Gamma frogman disguised as diplomat had single-handedly sunk and damaged several enemy ships near Alexandretta, Turkey, realized the potential of diving for recreational purposes. Together with Duilio Marcante and Egidio Cressi (founder of the Cressi diving equipment brand), Ferraro started offering diving courses to the public. At first with Italian-made oxygen rebreathers limited to 40 ft/12 m due to oxygen toxicity under pressure and later using open-circuit compressed air breathing apparatuses, the so-called ‘Aqua-Lung’, developed by Émile Gagnan and Jacques Cousteau in 1942. The latter allowed divers to reach greater depths of 197 ft/60 m and more but required precise timing and strict decompression routines to prevent divers from getting the bends (decompression sickness).

Around the same time, a documentary filmmaker named Bruno Vailati made his first steps into the fascinating world beneath the waves. As many men of his generation, he had experienced World War 2 first-hand. When the Nazis occupied large parts of the Italian Peninsula following Italy’s surrender to the Allies in September 1943, Bruno Vailati became an Italian Partisan (freedom fighter) and fought the brutal German occupiers tooth and nail. His greatest feat was the liberation of General Richard O’Connor and other highranking British officers captured in North Africa from an Italian prison camp near Florence.

During his struggle to liberate Italy, Vailati had often heard of the famous Italian and German Navy frogman stationed in Valdagno and Venice, and when he later started diving himself, he immediately fell in love with the underwater world. So much so, he organized a national underwater expedition to the Red Sea for the purpose of studying and cataloguing the species found in the region. The exploit took place between summer 1952 and autumn 1953 and resulted also in the first full-length, full-colour underwater film titled ‘Sesto Continente’ (English title ‘The Blue Continent’) which premiered in 1954.

Interestingly, most divers of the expedition were equipped with Rolex Oyster Perpetual Ref. 6098 ‘pre-Explorer’ watches which were later engraved by Rolex and presented to the participants as souvenirs. It can be assumed that René-Paul Jeanneret, right-hand man of Rolex founder Hans Wilsdorf and as a passionate diver himself absolutely instrumental in developing the legendary Rolex Submariner, learned of the Italian expedition and provided the watches to test their reliability under extreme conditions.

‘Sesto Continente’

Directed by Folco Quilici, the film ‘Sesto Continente’ featured notable Italian underwater pioneers like famous free diving champion Raimondo Bucher, his wife Enza, a champion in spearfishing, the “amphibian human” Silverio Zecca in addition to various hydrobiologists of the University of Rome. In preparation for the adventure, the crew trained on Ponza Island off Naples until December 1952. To promote the expedition before their departure to the Red Sea, Raimondo Bucher announced a new world record attempt in free diving. In early November 1952, he reached a record depth of 128 ft/39 m.

During his record dive, Raimondo Bucher was prominently wearing a watch with a white dial on his wrist. Footage of him after the dive shows the watch was almost certainly a Rolex Oyster Perpetual on an Oyster bracelet.

A similar watch was worn by Bruno Vailati’s in the picture below, taken in the Dahlak Archipelago in the Red Sea. Vailati’s watch, which surfaced in collector circles a few years ago, is a Rolex Oyster Perpetual Ref. 6098 ‘pre-Explorer’.

‘Sesto Continente’ premiered in 1954, two years before Jacques Cousteau’s ‘The Silent World’. The divers spent a total of 10,000 hours under water. Times were different back then. In many of the scenes, animals are hunted down and killed rather then observed.

However, it is also important to note these were the early days of undersea exploration. All captured species were catalogued, conserved and sent to the University of Rome for further study.

Some of the black and white photos were later colourized to be used as impressive movie posters.

More ‘Sesto Continente’ movie posters can be found here:

Link: The Sixth Continent, Italian Vertical Photobustas (Heritage Auctions)

‘Sesto Continente’ film director Folco Quilici continued to wear his ‘Sesto Continente’ Rolex for the rest of this life.

The documentary ‘Sesto Continente’ can be watched in its full length on Youtube:

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Bruno Vailati’s Watch

The watch Bruno Vailati wore during the Red Sea expedition was a Rolex Oyster Perpetual Ref. 6098 ‘pre-Explorer’ with white dial. As so often with historically important watches that were heavily rocked, Vailati’s watch surfaced a few years ago with an aftermarket silver dial and hands. The piece was offered around but nobody seemed interested. The then owner was able to source a more or less period-correct dial and corresponding ‘feuille’ hands in order to restore the watch the best he could to what it might have looked like initially. It will be interesting to see if more watches from this spectacular expedition surface so that we can get a better picture as to what dials the watches were delivered with.

Ref. 6098 is nicknamed ‘pre-Explorer’ as it was the very reference the British Mount Everest expedition that conquered the mountain in late May 1953 received from Rolex. Unfortunately for Rolex, none of the two climbers who ultimately managed to summit, namely Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, wore a Rolex to the top. The furthest a Rolex came in 1953 was the South Summit with an elevation of 28,704 ft/ 8,749 m on the wrist of Tom Bourdillon, who in tandem with Charles Evans had been selected by expedition leader Colonel John Hunt to reach the top first. Problems with Evan’s oxygen set forced them to turn back just 300 ft/100 m shy of the summit. The picture below of Tom Bourdillon at the South Summit is quite interesting as it surely looks like the watch was shown off on purpose.

Coming back to Vailati’s watch, as usual after this kind of expeditions, Rolex ultimately gifted the watch as a souvenir. It can be assumed, Rolex asked for the watch to be returned for a complete overhaul and to be appropriately engraved, just as with the Mount Everest watches. The engravings were executed in the very same fashion.

The inside of the caseback is stamped IV.52 referring to a production in the fourth quarter of 1952.

Bruno Vailati’s watch is a beautiful testament to the early days of underwater exploration. It is the ultimate proof that pre-Submariner Rolex Oyster watches were perfectly fitted for scuba diving.

Vailati’s love affair with the submarine world continued after ‘Sesto Continente’ and he went on to produce numerous documentaries about the fascinating world beneath the sea, the most prominent one probably being ‘Andrea Doria -74’.

Update June 20, 2023
Right after publishing this article, another ‘Sesto Continente’ Rolex surfaced out of the blue. The watch belonged to Francesco Baschieri Salvadori who was one of the two hydrobiologists of the University of Rome. Baschieri’s watch has a later tritium service dial.

The picture below, taken from Folco Quilici’s book ‘Aventura nel Sesto Continente’, shows Francesco Baschieri Salvadori (left), Bruno Vailati and Raimondo Bucher in Naples, Italy, before their departure to the Red Sea. Check their wrists!

Please keep them coming!

Update July 21, 2023
Prior to publishing this article, I reached out to Rolex to ask if they had any information related to the expedition. It took them a few days to dig through the records but boy did the good folks at Rolex deliver. What they found is a document that confirms the whole story in addition to providing important facts like the total number of watches supplied. It is a letter written on September 12, 1953 by the Director of the ‘National Underwater Expedition to the Red Sea’, Bruno Vailati.

“Con la presente Vi esprimo il ringraziamento mio e dei miei collaboratori per la fornitura alla nostra organizzazione di sette orologi Rolex Super Oyster.

Tali orologi sono stati da noi portati ininterrottamente per l’intera durata della nostra impresa, e cioé dal 27 dicembre 1952 al 26 giugno 1953, passando dal clima invernale italiano alle temperature elevatissime del Mar Rosso Meridionale.

Gli orologi ci sono stati particolarmente preziosi durante l’esecuzione dei nostri lavori subacquei, permettendoci di sincronizzare sistematicamente le nostre attività in un ambiente, come quello subacqueo, in cui le comunicazioni sono naturalmente difficili. Il nostro lavoro ha comportato immersioni quotidiane prolungate, fino a sette-otto ore quotidiane in media, su profondità medie di 10/15 metri, pur non essendo infrequenti immersioni fino a 30 metri e oltre. Non abbiamo mai avuto a lamentare, in relazione a tali attività, infiltrazioni di acqua o comunque inconvenienti di natura affine.

Altrettanto possiamo dire in relazione alla possibilità di infiltrazione di sabbia o di umidità, elevatissima quest’ultima specie nell’ultima fase dei lavori: anche questa prova é stata superata brillantemente dai vostri orologi.

Debbo perciò felicitarmi con Voi per la eccellente prestazione fornita dai Vostri Super Oyster, anche in relazione alla regolarità e puntualità di marcia, e Vi confermo la mia intenzione di servirmi dei medesimi per la seconda fase dei nostri lavori nel Mar Rosso, che avrà inizio a fine mese.”

Translation

I hereby express my and my staff’s thanks to you for providing our organization with seven Rolex Super Oyster watches.

These watches were worn uninterruptedly for the entire duration of our enterprise, namely from 27 December 1952 to 26 June 1953, passing from the Italian winter climate to the very high temperatures of the Southern Red Sea.

The Watches were particularly valuable to us while performing our underwater work, allowing us to systematically synchronize our activities in an environment, such as underwater, where communications are naturally difficult. Our work involved prolonged daily dives, up to seven or eight hours daily on average, to average depths of 10 to 15 metres, although dives to 30 meters and beyond were not infrequent. We have never had to complain, in relation to these activities, of water infiltrations or inconveniences of a similar nature.

The same can be said in relation to the possibility of infiltration of sand or humidity, the latter very high especially in the last phase of the works: this test too was brilliantly passed by your watches.

I must therefore congratulate you on the excellent performance provided by your Super Oysters, also in relation to the regularity and punctuality of the running, and I confirm my intention to use them for the second phase of our work in the Red Sea, which will start at the end of the month.

Now we know that there are seven watches in total. It will be interesting to see how many of the seven will ultimately surface.

The Wreck Of The Andrea Doria

In July 1968, Bruno Vailati organized and directed an Italian expedition to the wreck of the Italian luxury transatlantic ocean liner ‘SS Andrea Doria’ that had sunk on July 26, 1953 to a depth of 243 ft/74 m, following a collision with the Swedish passenger liner ‘Stockholm’ off Nantucket Island in Massachusetts, USA. The risky undertaking done on compressed air was captured in Vailati’s documentary film titled ‘Andrea Doria -74’. As you can see in the picture below, Vailati and the rest of the divers wore Rolex Submariner watches during the feat.

An interesting detail of Vailati’s Submariner is the expanding Oyster bracelet. Given the watch is probably a Ref. 5513 from the second half of the 1960s, seeing this type of bracelet is quite a revelation.

The wreck of the ‘Andrea Doria’ sits at a depth of 242 ft/74 m. Bruno Vailati and Co used regular compressed air for the dives which is quite risky due to a condition known as ‘nitrogen narcosis’ caused by the anesthetic effect of certain gases at high pressure. The effects can commonly be felt beyond 98 ft/30 m. Since the wreck lies on the side, exploring the top of the wreck at around 164 ft/50 m is manageable for experienced divers. In the picture below, Vailati wore beside his Rolex Submariner, a depth gauge and a ScubaPro Automatic Decompression Meter, a forerunner of modern dive computers.

Rolex Submariner watches are omnipresent in Vailati’s ‘Andrea Doria -74’ film. There are even close-ups like in the scene captured below. Having white two-liner dials, it becomes evident the watches were Ref. 5513 Submariners. It would not surprise me a bit if Rolex provided the watches in addition to possibly supporting the expedition through the Hans Wilsdorf Foundation.

The next picture shows Stefano Carletti brushing silt off the bronze letters of the ship’s name at stern. He too wore a Rolex Submariner.

Here we see Cosimo ‘Mimi’ Dies wearing the Rolex Submariner with an expanding Oyster bracelet over his diving suit.

‘Andrea Doria -74’ is available in it full lengths on Youtube:

Diving the wreck of the ‘Andrea Doria’, especially on compressed air, was an impressive feat. These guys were true daredevils.

Thoughts

Coming across this kind of stories in this day and age is absolutely refreshing. One would think everything has been discovered when it comes to watches but stories like this prove there is still plenty out there waiting to come to the surface. The present story is also a wonderful prelude for an upcoming deep dive in typical Perezcope fashion into the history of the legendary Rolex Submariner which in my opinion was the very first modern dive watch, despite claims to the contrary made by a certain brand in recent years.

All main figures of the national underwater expedition to the Red Sea have passed away. This article is dedicated to them and their pioneering spirit. In the meantime, I leave you with this wonderful picture of Bruno Vailati rocking a Rolex Submariner.

Thank you for your interest.

Special thanks to Joe Capuano (IG: @havanasun) for bringing Bruno Vailati’s watch to my attention and financing this article and the extensive research that went into it.

Related Articles

Read more: The realities of the Rolex Deep Sea Special No. 1 at Christie’s Geneva
Read more: The Sea-Dweller chronicles – Genesis of the decompressing watch
Read more: The Sea-Dweller chronicles – Dry run and teaming up with Comex

History Of The Rolex Sea-Dweller

Born from the legendary Rolex Submariner, the Rolex Sea-Dweller was developed in the late 1960s for a new generation of divers. The following infographic shows the evolution of the watch in its historical context. Please click the picture to zoom in and explore all the details.

This graphic is available as a high quality print in two sizes:

• Regular small, 120cm x 68cm (47 x 26 inch): EUR 95.00 (plus shipping)
• Regular, 150cm x 85cm (59 x 33 inch): EUR 135.00 (plus shipping)

Limited: 50 pieces, numbered and signed by Bob Barth, the legendary U.S. Navy Aquanaut who pioneered saturation diving during the famous SEALAB missions. Bob developed the idea for the Rolex Gas Escape Valve: Sold out.

To order please contact me on Instagram: @perezcope , or send an email to: jose – perezcope – com.