You have to be able to handle the worst, most extreme conditions so that you are never afraid to face everyday life. That’s why just 70 years ago, Tudor decided to entrust its Oyster Prince, its first water-resistant and automatic watch, to Arctic explorers on the British North Greenland Expedition.
On July 8, 1952, once visited by the young Queen Elizabeth II, the expedition left Deptford, a London borough on the banks of the Thames, for a two-year scientific mission into the ice of Greenland. He carries his own luggage in addition to equipment and food“Five Books of Tudor Clocks”.. That’s about thirty Tudor Oyster Prince ref. 7909 34 mm diameter. They had to be tested in these extreme conditions according to the methodology established before the departure of the scientists and sailors of the expedition. An expedition whose main objective is to conduct deep glaciological and seismic studies in several areas of this country, which are 80% covered by ice.
Fully equipped with the Oyster Prince model, the expedition members will track the change in accuracy of their watches as far as possible from day to day in relation to the time signal issued by the BBC and record it in special notebooks. Upon their return to the heart of Greenland’s cold, the data methodically recorded in the notebooks of the researchers will allow to improve the resistance, durability and reliability of Tudor watches. It was on this occasion that the brand created one of the first long-term tests in real, but above all, extreme conditions. This approach to the so-called “destruction test”, which puts the watch to the test by experts and under extreme conditions, would be the theme of Tudor’s first large-scale advertising campaign, launched in 1952.
For this project, and given the expected temperatures, the watches sent to Greenland were specially lubricated with an oil called: “Arctic” and shipped with bracelet extensions that allow them to be worn outside on the wings of parks. Returning from Greenland, one of the expedition members wrote in a letter to Tudor’s attention that his watch was preserved in the token archive; “Remarkable accuracy maintained” and: “That under no circumstances should it be lifted by hand.”
During the presentation of the new Ranger collection, which was inspired by the instrument watches of the past, the Swiss watchmaker’s teams, as they did 70 years ago, on the docks of London, both explorers’ notes and photographs of the British North. Greenland expedition. Brand even luckily managed to find one of the Oyster Princes martyred on this expedition. A piece that decades later a scholar pulled from a shelf and then offered to his son, who has now joined the home collections.
Source: Le Figaro
