Rolex is a luxury watch brand. But some of them are also tough, resilient workhorses designed for specific and challenging jobs.
A pioneering example of the latter type of Rolex, which like them all remains elegant and elevated in design, was sold last week and realised £1.3 million at a Sotheby’s sale in Switzerland.
The watch is called “the Companion Oyster” and the person it accompanied was Mercedes Gleitze. She wore it on a ribbon round her neck during her second cross-Channel swim in 1927.
Mercedes was born in Brighton to German immigrant parents. From childhood, she loved to swim, and as a young woman she became one of the best-known endurance and distance swimmers in the country.
Her fame was well deserved, built up with long swims in the Thames. In October 1927 she took on the obvious challenge for a south coast swimmer when she set off to complete a crossing of the English Channel.
And, she did it, becoming the first woman to make the journey.
But, another woman immediately came forward to say she’d already done it. And done it more quickly.
What to do?
The challenge was eventually shown to be a fabrication.
Dated and dedicated, Mercedes became a pioneering brand ambassador with the receipt of this watch. Image courtesy of Sotheby's.
But, before it was proved Mercedes set out to show that she and only she was capable of swimming from England to France by making a “Vindication Swim”.
It was on this swim that she wore the lovely watch that was sold this week.
Rolex gave her a pre-production prototype of their new Oyster case.
They’d bought the case concept from an outside maker. The idea was to address the sort of moisture ingress you might get from using your watch in ordinary circumstances. But, the Oyster case proved to be a spectacular success in much more challenging conditions.
Soon, Rolex retailers had fish tanks in their windows with Oyster watches at the bottom, happily ticking away.
Mercedes’ second swim gave the company a perfect opportunity to go even further.
She was given a pre-production prototype of the case for the swim, a really early example that predates the award of the patent for the Oyster case.
Despite the physical challenge it had to survive, the watch is every bit a Rolex, refined, elegant and even delicate. Image courtesy of Sotheby's.
This is no rugged functional item. It’s delicate, elegant and feminine, with a salmon pink dial. Mercedes could have walked straight from the beach into a chic French café and looked completely at home.
In the event, she didn’t. The Vindication Swim was attempted later in the year and in water temperatures lower than Channel swimmers would usually tolerate. She didn’t complete the second crossing, but her properly recorded endurance showed that she could have done it.
And, her rival’s claims were revealed as a hoax, deliberately engineered from a virtuous desire to expose the ridiculous media frenzy and lack of actual regulation around a Channel Swimming craze.
Mercedes has a legacy today. Last year a film about the Vindication Swim was released. She went on to achieve even more feats in the water before dedicating herself to family life and charity work - in time she would downplay and even hide her extraordinary career.
And her watch. Sotheby’s sold it, describing it as one of the most significant watches in private hands.
The Gleitze deal was a pioneering sports tie-in. And, the proof of the waterproofing opened up the world of diving watches and more. Mercedes’ swim with a beautiful, portable piece of jewellery was, say Sotheby’s, a big reason why wristwatches came to replace pocket watches.
The sale was a tussle. Several would-be owners fought to become the Companion Watch's new custodian, with a private collector from Asia, who had travelled to Geneva, winning out over absentee and phone bidders.
The watch now becomes one of the most valuable Rolexes ever sold at auction, perhaps the fifth, though we’ll await an expert confirmation of how exchange rates and auction fees measure up for this sale before placing it in a chart.
And take a look at our watches here.
