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The Top 5 Dive Watches: The Doxa SUB 300T
In our last post, we presented our definitive, set-in-stone, never-to-be-challenged-by-anyone round-up of the top five dive watches of all time.
Now that that thorny subject has been put to rest in perpetuity, we get to delve a little deeper into each of the finalists and explore just what it is that makes them so worthy of inclusion.
Occupying the number five slot was a watch possibly only familiar to those with a wider knowledge of horology in general. It is a name by no means as well-known as some of the usual suspects from the likes of Rolex or Omega, but nevertheless, it and the brand responsible for its creation can lay claim to significant innovations in the dive watch sector.
Without further ado, let’s explore the DOXA SUB 300T.
A Little History
DOXA had its beginnings in the spiritual home of watchmaking, Le Locle, Switzerland’s third smallest city, located in the Jura Mountains.
Founded in 1889 by the 21-year old Georges Ducommun, he had begun his watchmaking apprenticeship at the tender age of 12.
Branching out on his own, Ducommun christened his new venture ‘Georges Ducommun, Fabriques Doxa’, taking the name from the Greek word for ‘Glory’.
By the start of the 20th century, Georges’s work was already being recognized across Europe, with one of his pocket watches honored by the ‘Exposition Universelle et Internationale’ at the 1905 World’s Fair, and a ground-breaking anti-magnetic model securing a gold medal the following year.
Soon, the company’s ‘8-Day DOXA Caliber’ had become standard issue inside the dashboard clocks of Bugatti’s endurance race cars, and would go on to be used in many of the era’s ships and aircraft too.
When Georges passed away in 1936, control of the company was handed to his son-in-law, Jacques Nardin, the grandson of Ulysse Nardin, founder of the elite watch brand which bears his name. Under Nardin’s stewardship, DOXA continued to focus on watches meant for sport and travel and also made pioneering strides with complications such as jumping seconds hands and pointer dates.
The Start of the Dive Era
Following the technical innovations made during underwater missions in WWII, a craze for recreational Scuba diving emerged in the 1950s.
Soon, enthusiasts of this new sport were clamoring for a reliable watch they could use on their excursions and numerous brands stepped up to supply some of the genre’s first icons. By the end of the decade, we already had several of the unsurpassed classics such as Rolex’s Submariner, Omega’s Seamaster 300 and the model which started it all, the Blancpain Fifty Fathoms.
DOXA’s very first effort didn’t debut until 1967. It was, however, an exceptional one.
The DOXA SUB 300T was created with input from unarguably the most famous oceanographer of them all, Jacques-Yves Cousteau. A revolution in its day, the watch was not only water resistant to an impressive 300 meters, it was also the first dive watch outfitted with a unidirectional bezel featuring dual scales, its markings showing the standard dive timer as well as the official no-decompression table so wearers could, together with a depth gauge, calculate their safe ascent rates.
The 42mm model with its radical flared case sides ran on the ETA 2872 automatic movement, beating at 28,800vph and equipped with a Quickset date function, and sat on a new type of bracelet dubbed the ‘Beads of Rice’, considered by many to be the greatest metal bracelet ever made.
Most striking of all though was the dial. Originally, the bright orange used for the SUB’s dials was chosen as it was thought to improve readability underwater. However, while that turned out not to be the case, what the color did do was attract attention, and when Cousteau and his crew wore the distinctive watches during many of their award-winning documentary movies, it brought some welcome marketing buzz.
Cousteau was actually chairman of the US Divers company at the time and they became sole distributors of the SUB in North America, often adding their Aqua Lung logo at the 7.30 position.
The success of the model led to a number of different variations as well. Where the orange-faced example was called the Professional, DOXA also released a silver dial model called the Searambler, a black dial called the Sharkhunter and a rare yellow piece known as the Divingstar.
On top of that, the brand also released a twin-register chronograph version called the T.Graph and, interestingly, a beefed up model called the Conquistador, the first commercially available watch ever to feature a helium release valve.
All these models started out with screw down crowns and acrylic crystals but when conglomerate Synchron bought out DOXA in the late ‘60s, they released a second generation fitted with mineral glass and a more cost-effective pull-out crown.
The Modern SUB
Sadly, DOXA fell afoul of the Quartz Crisis and the SUB 300T was discontinued in 1977, with the company as a whole forced to cease trading in the early 1980s.
That was not the end of the story, however. In 1997, entrepreneur and avid dive watch collector Rick Marei,formerly of Microsoft, approached DOXA in hopes of resurrecting the brand. By 2001, a limited release re-edition of the SUB 300T (now called simply the SUB 300) was being offered for sale online and today, the company is up and running and in a very healthy position.
There are currently 13 different models in the permanent collection along with a host of special editions. One of those is the ‘Clive Cussler’, named after the renowned American author of the Dirk Pitt adventure novels who Cussler outfitted with a SUB 300T in his tales.
And he isn’t the only celebrity endorsement. Jacques-Yves Cousteau’s son, Jean-Michel, along with his Ocean Futures Society team, all chose the DOXA SUB as their standard-issue watch. Not only that, Jacques’s grandson, the conservationist Fabien Cousteau, recently became the third generation of the family to put their trust in the watch when he wore a SUB during his Mission 31 venture. The longest ever expedition to take place on Aquarius, the planet’s only underwater science laboratory, Cousteau beat his grandfather’s record of 30 days living in the marine habitat 63-feet beneath the sea.
The DOXA SUB 300T is rightfully considered a legend in the world of early dive watches. Packed with innovative features and offbeat styling, it is indisputably a piece of diving iconography and deserves its place on any list of history’s most important and influential timepieces.
Featured Photo: Mix art by Oriol Mendivil.
