Horolonomics

There's a certain genre of watch lore involving lost and recovered timepieces. Arguably the most important of these is Cole Pennington's 2019 story of a watch worn by a Marine Corps pilot whose plane was shot down during a covert CIA operation over southern China in 1952.

I've posted a couple of these stories as well, including one in which a watch owner faked throwing away a watch (only for his relatively to later find the watch was kept and sold) and another watch which was lost in a field by a farmer and later recovered.

Rolex, the company, celebrated the "lost and found" story genre in the 1950s.

In a series of advertisements dubbed "Fantastic Stories," Rolex retold some compelling experiences of watches and watch owners. At least two of these ads, The Professor of Milan and 7 Years Under the Sea (Under Greek Waters) featured tales of watches which were lost in somewhat deep water and later recovered and returned to their owners. These ads included illustrations by Eric Fraser, a sought-after artist of the era.

So when one of my algorithmically-controlled feeds served up a very recent story about an improbably-recovered Rolex, I decided I would write about it. The watch in question was reportedly lost during a scuba diving trip off the south shore of Kauaʻi, one of the Hawaiian islands. The owner, Gregory Greer, is a very experienced diver (he told a local news station that he'd been diving for around 44 years).

The watch in question is a Rolex Oyster Perpetual Datejust in steel on an Oyster bracelet, black dial and polished bezel (side note, Greg indicated to me that he bought the watch in 2002 so I would have expected a "railroad" style minute track on the dial but the pictures I've seen suggest the watch may actually be a 2009 or later Datejust II).

According to local news reporting in Hawaii, Greg offered a $2,000 reward when he discovered he'd lost his watch during the dive. Twenty months later, a dive instructor named Logan Barnard saw a glimmer on the ocean bottom, swam over and picked up the lost watch. Logan's co-worker remembered that Greg had lost a Rolex and they soon realized that this was, in fact, the lost watch. The divers reached out to Gregory and soon his recovered timepiece was on its way back to Greg via package delivery.

From photos of the recovered watch it appeared to me that a springbar failed, causing the bracelet to detach and the watch to sink. The crystal was broken and I couldn't imagine that would happen as a consequence of sinking to the bottom, although that is certainly possible. My own diving and snorkling experiences suggest that destructive impact was more likely during a return to a vessel after a dive (a bobbing ship offers all kinds of opportunities for a strike to an arm). I also wondered if Greg wore the watch outside a wetsuit. Even with a micro adjustment system like Easylink, it might be difficult to resize an Oyster bracelet to accomodate the additional thickness of a wetsuit, thereby increasing the tension on a springbar and making it more likely that the watch might be lost.

I offer these details because they helped shape the questions I sent to Greg when I reached out about the story. Those questions, and Greg's answers, are below (questions and answers were lightly edited for the sake of brevity, please note that I did my best to corroborate all aspects of this story to the best of my ability but certain details are hard to confirm):

Could you tell me a little more about your recovered timepiece, specifically maybe a little more about how, when and why you bought it? Do you have other watches in a collection?

I bought my Rolex Datejust in 2002, a time when you could walk into any Rolex shop anywhere in the world and choose any type of Rolex you wanted, including the Presidential, pay for it on the spot and start wearing it. You can't do that now. Walk into any Rolex shop anywhere in the world today and you'll be hard-pressed to find any new Rolex. I do not collect Rolex. This was a one-off.

Could you tell me a little more about the dive and your diving qualifications? This was a mixed gas dive? Did you see anything interesting? Was this part of a larger diving excursion?

I've been a certified Open Water Diver since 1981. This was just an ordinary dive, same as usual. The clarity was good and there was nothing unusual to see. This was not a nitrogen dive, rather my first Nitrox dive. That's what caused the loss: the computer they insisted I wear on my left arm kept banging the watch and finally knocked it off.

Do you usually dive with your Rolex on wrist? In this case was it over a wet or dry suit?

I ALWAYS wear my Rolex when diving! A Rolex is a form of international identification. All Rolexes have a unique number associated with the owner. All records are maintained by Rolex. Numerous murder cases have been solved by tracing the Rolex on the body (Horolonomics: Greg provided a link to a British crime investigation story on YouTube).

There was another case in Maine years ago similar to the British story (Horolonomics: see story linked above), about a man who had been thrown in the lobster bay in Maine, the lobsters ate most of him to the point he was unrecognizable, yet he still had his Rolex on.

I was wearing a 2 mil dive suit and the watch was both under and over the dive suit. My dive suit is very thin now after over ten years of being compressed underwater all over the world.

It appears a springbar gave way on your Rolex and that is how it was lost, please correct me if I am wrong. It also appears the crystal was damaged. Was there some kind of impact, maybe at the beginning or end of the dive on the boat or even underwater?

I have no idea what happened and I never saw the watch fall off my wrist.

I thought it was lost in the white sand at the bottom. The guy who found it a mile-and-a-half away thinks that an octopus got ahold of it and kept it. Remember, the Nitrox computer knocked it off.

Could you tell me about your plans for the watch going forward? Do you plan to have it repaired? Will you send it to Rolex or an independent watchmaker?

I only deal with licensed Rolex shops. I visited Lenkersdorfer today and everyone in the shop flipped. They will talk to Rolex and see what can be done, but they love the story so much that they suggest keeping it as is and framing it. They said it would be very difficult to fix the watch since water got in.

How did you feel when you heard the watch was recovered?

I was diving down in the Bahamas when I received the text. Diving was really cool in the Bahamas: sharks everywhere ... I felt great!

Congratulations on the recovery of your watch, this episode is an important part of its provenance.

Maybe I should sell it as-is on Ebay! Maybe Rolex will make me an offer I can't refuse. Anyway, hundreds of thousands of people on all the Hawaiian islands saw that TV snippet. What great advertising for Rolex!

Conclusion

So there you have it: the latest chapter in the saga of Rolexes lost and recovered at sea. Just to wrap up, I wanted to offer readers a few notes on why I haven't posted since July (yikes!). I am currently on sabbatical and I was just in Switzerland for three weeks visiting two archives in order to collect records relating to my research project. Perhaps it isn't a surprise that the project is watch industry related. I thought I would be able to keep writing during this part of my sabbatical but it just didn't work out (in essence, I pressed pause on writing so that I could take time to record more than 2,000 pages of materials in German and French). But I think I will be back to posting on a more regular basis now that I've returned to the U. S. Thanks, as always, for reading, commenting and sharing!

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