1953 was a key year for the Rolex sports line of watches, as it was the year that two of the longest running and most
successful watches were unveiled at the spring Basel fair - the Explorer and the Submariner. 1953 was also the debut
year for the Turn O Graph reference 6202, a cool but short lived opening of the ToG saga. By 1953 Rolex’s reputation
as the de-facto maker of waterproof watches was well established, helped by such advertising opportunities as the
Mercedes Gleitze cross-channel swim. Ever the canny entrepreneur, Hans Wilsdorf made sure that the first lady
swimmer to make the cross channel swim from France to England was wearing a Rolex Oyster. This advertising is
considered key in Rolex’s journey to being the most well-known watch brand on the planet. With that reputation in
place, it was a natural progression to making professional watches aimed at the emerging water-sports industry.
By the early 1950s, modern diving equipment was becoming commercially available. The systems of the early 1940s and
post World War II developments meant that more people were able to dive recreationally. Rolex was one of the leaders
in providing a wristwatch that would serve as an essential piece of safety equipment. Although Blancpain were
slightly ahead of Rolex with their Fifty Fathoms watch, the Submariner reference 6204 was the very first dive watch
to be rated to a depth of 100 metres. The watch had a highly legible dial layout, with hands that like the painted
hour hands were filled with Radium. This allowed the wearer to tell the time in dim-lit environments such as
underwater. The rotating bezel allowed the wearer to measure elapsed time by moving the triangle, also with luminous
filling, to the where the minute hand was at the beginning of the dive and therefore knowing exactly how long they
had been submerged. Sounds simple, but this was life or death information and so no diver would dive without a good
quality waterproof wristwatch.
The Submariner has always been a three-piece design, unlike the monobloc cases of the 40s and early 50s. The
three-piece watches consisted of steel mid-cases onto which a screw case back was fitted and an acrylic crystal was
pressed over a rehaut on the front of the case and then sealed with a bezel-retaining ring (onto which the rotating
bezel also clicked). The winding crown then screwed down against the side of the case thus making the watch
hermetically sealed. This was the Oyster system and it was very, very good. For reasons of operational ease of use,
in 1955 Rolex unveiled the reference 6200, which had a much bigger winding crown which was easier to unscrew and had
a much thicker case that enabled Rolex to depth rate it to 200 metres. This watch co-existed with the 6204 and 6205
(released in 1954); the 6205 being similar to the 6204 but with Mercedes pattern hands where the 6204 had pencil
hands. The 6200 was the first of what collectors now refer to as Big Crown Submariners and by default the 6204/5
were known as small crowns. These watches were fitted with the A260 and A296 movements.
These early Subs were experimental and market-testing pieces, which Rolex consolidated into two references in 1956;
the Big Crown was reference 6538 and the small crown was reference 6536. In 1958, Rolex released the Big Crown 5510
and Small Crown 5508, both of which housed the latest Rolex caliber, the 1530. These watches are viewed as
transitional models, mainly due to the fact that they housed the movement that would stay in the Submariner watches
for the next 30 years!
In 1959, the Sub went through its biggest transformation. Gone was the small 6mm crown and gone also was the large
8mm crown. Instead, the new twin-lock 7mm crown was introduced on reference 5512, a non-date Submariner that had new
crown-guards. These crown guards flanked the winding crown and offered protection for arguably the most vulnerable
part of the watch. The 5513 was introduced in the early 1960s and was fitted with the 1530 movement (which pretty
quickly was changed to another non-chronometer movement the 1520). The 5512 was upgraded to chronometer status in
1963 so for a year they co-existed on an even keel. The 5513 outran the 5512 and had a staggering run of 27
years!
The reference 14060 was the successor to the 5513 in 1989 and whilst it maintained the aesthetics and character of
the 5513 it was re-packaged for the new era of sport watches. Out went the scratch-prone acrylic crystal and in came
a new flat sapphire glass. Rolex kept the steel bezel ring and aluminium insert, albeit a little bigger for the
sapphire glass, but the bezel featured a unidirectional bezel that was technically an improvement to the old spring
washer system. The 14060 also heralded the arrival of the new 3000 series calibre, which utilised some of the new
developments in calibre technology into which Rolex had invested so much research and development. In 2001 Rolex
updated the movement in the 14060 and gave the watch the letter M at the end of the reference number to represent
the updated movement. The calibre 3130 was chronometer rated and so the text Superlative Chronometer Officially
Certified was added to the dial making them ‘four line’ dials – not seen since the 5512 in the early
1970s.
2012 saw the introduction of the reference 114060, that version of the non-date Submariner that featured a number of
Rolex’s latest technological innovations. The calibre 3130 was still deployed to drive the Sub, but it was housed in
a new steel case with much wider proportions, especially the lugs. Known by collectors as the ‘maxi case’, this
fat-lugged case was used on the GMT-Master and Submariner Date too. The dial continued to have the four lines of
text on the lower half and the hands and hour plots were filled with the latest Rolex proprietary luminous compound,
Chromalight. The watch also housed a Cerachrom bezel insert, which was fade-proof and scratch resistant.
In 2020 the new era of the Submariner was welcomed. True to form these watches are an evolution rather than a
revolution of the Submariner, but the tweaks are important. The Submariner has for the first time since the late
1950s had a size increase from 40 to 41mm and the proportions of the bracelet are a little different too, with a
slightly broader presence. The Submariner is fitted with calibre 3230, whilst the Submariner Date houses calibre
3235. That’s the incredible thing about the Submariner; whether you are 300 metres below the North Sea, snorkeling
in Nice, driving your 911 across the desert or having a drink at The Connaught, it never lets you down!
