Oris - 2016 Divers Carl Brashear Limited Edition Bronze

WHAT WE LOVE:

Carl Brashear joined the United States Navy in 1948 as a seventeen-year-old. Despite facing racial discrimination throughout his career, he graduated from the Navy's diving programme in 1954. In 1966, during a mission to recover a hydrogen bomb lost off the coast of Spain, an accident left him with the lower portion of his left leg amputated. After an exhausting rehabilitation, he became the first amputee diver in US Navy history in 1968, and in 1970 became the first African American to qualify as a US Navy Master Diver. He died in 2006. The Oris Carl Brashear Limited Edition commemorates all of that.

The watch was the first bronze watch Oris had ever produced, introduced in 2016, and the choice of material is directly thematic: the same bronze used in the construction of deep-sea diving helmets of the 1950s — the helmets Brashear wore during his career — makes up the multi-piece case and bezel ring. Every example develops its own unique patina over time, the surface of the bronze oxidising in a way that no two watches will replicate identically. The dark blue dial with its rose gold-plated applied indices and dauphine hands creates a colour combination against the warm bronze case that is immediately and completely right. Limited to 2,000 pieces, supplied in a special luxury wooden presentation box.

WHAT'S INSIDE

Powered by the Oris Calibre 733 — based on the Sellita SW200-1, a 26-jewel Swiss automatic movement beating at 28,800 vibrations per hour with a 38-hour power reserve, featuring instantaneous date change and a fine-timing device. The domed sapphire crystal with anti-reflective coating on both sides complements the vintage character of the bronze case, and the stainless steel caseback with its relief engraving closes with a screwback.

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