Review: Breitling Superocean Heritage ‘57

There are three constants in this world: life, death and the Rolex Submariner being mentioned in a conversation about dive watches. To some, the Submariner is as important as diving itself, if not more, as though diving were merely invented as a platform to give the Submariner purpose; for others, they’d sooner hear their own name read out in an obituary than the name of Rolex’s undersea model one more time. For them, I give you this: the Breitling Superocean Heritage ’57—and it’s very much not a Submariner.

The 1957 Original

The 1950s is one of the most incredible decades of human endeavour, well, ever. Given that humans have been knocking about for well over 300,000 years, to suggest that the 0.003% of the time situated between the forties and sixties as being up there as one of the top notable periods of human history is a pretty bold claim. Let me attempt to justify that to you.

Before the fifties, travel between Europe and America took five days by boat. Transatlantic flight started to take shape towards the end of the forties, but it was in the fifties that the common man became able to make that crossing by air himself. And it wasn’t just the skies that had been conquered; space, too, had a mark made upon it by humans for the first time with the 1957 launch of Sputnik 1, the first satellite placed in orbit. The sea, too, was breached, Émile Gagnan’s portable Aqua-Lung scuba gear finding success not just commercially, but recreationally as well. The very limits of human endurance and capability were being tested to the extreme.

Watch companies fiercely competed with one another to dominate sea, sky and space, and whilst it was Blancpain who created the first prototype for what we now consider the modern dive watch—complete with clear, luminous dial and rotating timing bezel—it was Rolex’s Submariner that brought this design to the masses. It was a shrewd business decision in hindsight, but a risky gamble at the time, placing a huge bet on the success of recreational diving.

As soon as that bet began to pay off, the other brands followed in droves. For Breitling, it’s entry into the dive watch market came a not insubstantial four years later in 1957 with the watch that inspired this, the Superocean. So, what made Breitling’s efforts better than Rolex’s? Well, nothing, really. The Superocean had 200m of water resistance, just like the Submariner. It had luminous hands and markers, just the like the Submariner. It had a rotating bezel, just like the Submariner.

The core selling point of the Superocean was that it wasn’t a Submariner. The styling was unique to the extreme, with its widely protruding bezel, deep set crystal and wild dial design. The bezel insert was stripped back to the bare minimum. The whole thing together looked like it was inspired by something halfway between a Cadillac and a UFO: two other very prominent highlights of the 1950s. So, really, there’s nothing huge to write home about with this watch, which is why it was quickly superseded where the Submariner stayed true. But now it’s back, and for the same reason it was created in the first place: to be something different than the Submariner.

The Modern Reissue

For anyone who’s ever complained that all dive watches look alike, that anything but the Submariner is just derivative of the Submariner, pay close attention. Breitling went all out in 1957 to make something that was clearly not a Submariner, and that still very much rings true today.

It’s quite a thing, this Superocean Heritage ’57, and a vastly different experience from Rolex’s best. If the Submariner was created under a brief to make the most functional and affordable diving instrument possible, the Breitling’s brief went something like this: whatever the Submariner does, do the opposite.

Of course, it retains the basics, like hands, markers and a turning bezel; it has to in order to be classified as a dive watch. But the way these features are executed is as far removed as it’s possible to get whilst still being familiar as a dive watch. The quarter markers, for example, famously familiar on a Rolex as rectangles and a triangle at twelve, are circles layered with chrome oblongs that mirror the accompanying luminous hour markers. They could’ve just been circles, but that would have been too similar to the Submariner.

And the hands—a big swathe of luminous paint differentiates the hour hand, broken into several pieces for stability. The now-famous Mercedes hand of the Rolex is substituted for a different shape altogether, split in a different way. The bezel too loses the practical detailing found on the Submariner, just so they are clearly distinguishable. The same, but different, and deliberately so.

It’s in three dimensions that the experience of this watch differs most. A Rolex Submariner is a very blocky design, raised, flattened crystal tapering gently into the bezel and falling slab sided into the case—a form sensibly chosen for usability and affordability. The Superocean, on the other hand, has a bezel with a hatlike brim and a dish deeper than a soup bowl. It’s sculptural more than it is structural.

Whilst the eye discerns little difference between the reissue and its original counterpart, Breitling has thoroughly gone to town bringing it up-to-date. The bezel is ceramic and not aluminium, the crystal sapphire and not plastic, the case 42mm and not thirty-nine. What it does retain is the most important feature it had in 1957: it’s still not a Submariner.

Is It For You?

So, what does that all add up to as a list of criteria for making this watch right for you? It’s not a Submariner, check. But there’s more to choosing a watch than that, and there are certainly more dive watches that are not Submariners than just this. So, you don’t want a Rolex—but why should you want this instead?

Well, here’s a few reasons why you might not: that 200m water-resistance with which it very much met expectations rather than exceeded is down to one hundred. Why? You’ll have to write Breitling and let me know what they say, because I’ve got no idea. It also does without the modern calibre B20, making do instead with the ETA 2892-based B10. It also costs £3,750 on this mesh bracelet, down to £3,400 on a leather strap.

Compared to the Rolex, that’s leagues apart in terms of price, but take Rolex’s sister brand, Tudor, and it’s a different story. Tudor’s Black Bay gets the full 200m of water-resistance, gets an in-house movement—which, funnily enough, it shares a variant of with Breitling to make the B20—and it costs £750 less. But—it does look very much like a Rolex Submariner, because it basically is one.

So, you could say that things aren’t looking pretty hot for the Breitling. Spec-wise, you could match it and then some at half the price. The Breitling hangs on with two things: one, it’s a Breitling, and that’s a special name to have on the dial of your watch; and two, nothing else looks quite like it.

As someone who places great value in, well, value, I almost hate to say it, but there’s something about the extreme approach to Breitling’s goal to differentiate the Superocean that—as narrowminded a goal as it may be—has struck a chord. This is lightning in a bottle territory without a shadow of a doubt, as the 1957 Superocean’s descendants would ultimately go on to prove.

But this, the original—it’s strangely beguiling. What shouldn’t work in the overdesigned dial and needlessly sculpted case has something so unique and fresh about it that just seeing it almost feels like a relief. Maybe that’s what it is—all it is—the same as it was in 1957: the relief of getting to look at something different for a change.

Breitling has a long history of trial and error, with as many flops as it has hits, and whilst the 1957 Superocean was a bit of a flop in its desperate debut to outshine the Submariner by singing the same tune in a different key, today that desperation to do something different seems to be paying off. The Superocean Heritage ’57 is not a perfect choice, not a value choice and certainly not a practical choice, yet what it does bring is something I think a lot of would-be customers with cash in their back pockets have been waiting on for a long time: a new, fresh choice that feels just—different. Maybe it really is that simple after all.

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