Swiss luxury watchmaker Blancpain, part of the Swatch Group, has unveiled a limited-edition Bathyscaphe diver’s watch to mark the 70th anniversary of the model. The new Fifty Fathoms Bathyscaphe is produced in a run of 300 individually numbered pieces, each priced at 13,800 Swiss francs.
The Bathyscaphe is the civilian variant of the Fifty Fathoms, introduced in 1953 as a robust professional instrument. In 1956, Blancpain expanded the line with the more compact Bathyscaphe, designed for recreational divers rather than military or commercial applications. The name traces its origins to Auguste Piccard’s deep-sea submersible, a hybrid of Greek terms for “deep” and “ship,” which Piccard used for record-breaking dives in the 1940s. Blancpain’s then-CEO Jean-Jacques Fiechter, an avid diver and creator of the Fifty Fathoms, registered the name with Swiss commercial authorities in 1953.
Marc A. Hayek, CEO of Blancpain, describes the Fifty Fathoms as a family of watches, with the Bathyscaphe as a key member. “It is not just a model, but a lineage,” he said.
The new edition retains the vintage aesthetic of the 1968 original, featuring a 37.4-millimeter stainless steel case, a sunburst gray “Meteor” dial, and baton-style hands and indices with vintage-toned Super-LumiNova. The bezel incorporates a black ceramic inlay, replacing the previous Hesalith material, and is paired with a hand-stitched chocolate-brown calfskin strap.
Inside, the watch houses the Manufacture Calibre 1150, offering 100 hours of power reserve and an antimagnetic silicon hairspring. The movement is visible through a sapphire caseback, revealing an 18-karat gold rotor. The timepiece is water-resistant to 300 meters and delivered in a numbered Peli case.
