Blancpain has just released a watch I can’t stop thinking about (I know, it’s only been like 60 minutes… but still). It’s called the Fifty Fathoms Bathyscaphe, and it marks 70 years since the model first launched back in 1956.
To celebrate, Blancpain has recreated one of its most iconic references, a watch from 1968, almost exactly as it was, and only 300 are being made.
The Bathyscaphe has always lived in the shadow of its bigger sibling, the Fifty Fathoms. That watch was built for military divers and professionals. The Bathyscaphe was its civilian cousin, smaller, sleeker, and designed for people who just liked to dive for fun.
That’s exactly the spirit this new dive watch captures.
It’s 37.40mm wide and 12.30mm thick, which sounds small by modern dive-watch standards, but in my opinion, is the perfect size similar to the Tudor Black Bay 54). This is what’s called a “skin diver”, built for wearing everyday rather than going to deep depths.
The dial is a sunburst meteor grey and it’s paired with a steel bezel with a ceramic insert. The numerals are lacquered rather than the old hesalite of the original.
The baton hands and indexes carry vintage-toned Super-LumiNova, giving the whole dial a warm, lived-in glow.
I think it looks fantastic – you could genuinely mistake it for a new old stock watch.
Inside is Blancpain’s in-house Calibre 1150, an automatic movement with a 100-hour power reserve. That’s around four days, which is really useful if you’ve got more than one watch in rotation. It’s got a silicon hairspring too, so it shrugs off magnetic fields far better than the original ever could.
There’s one big difference from the 1968 piece, though – the case back. The original was solid, while this one is sapphire, so you can watch the movement tick away, complete with an 18K gold oscillating weight styled after the original Fifty Fathoms rotor. It’s a small concession to modern taste.
Water resistance sits at 30 bar (300 metres) matching the wider Fifty Fathoms family.
Each piece comes individually numbered and ships in a Peli case, which feels like a nice nod to the watch’s diving DNA.
The Fifty Fathoms Bathyscaphe (ref. 5903-1110-63A) costs CHF 13,800 (approx. US$17,500 / £17,700), and comes on a hand-stitched chocolate calf leather strap with a pin buckle.
Liked this? I swapped my Apple Watch for a mechanical watch 10 years ago, and I’ve never looked back
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