Fifty Fathoms BARAKUDA

“It was a different world.”
Jean-Jacques Fiechter

With these five words, Fiechter, who co-led Blancpain together with his aunt, Betty Fiechter, insightfully captured the state of scuba diving in the years immediately after the end of the war. Equipment that today is taken for granted either simply did not exist or was in the early stages of development. Fiechter’s contribution to this paucity of diving material was his development of the first modern diving watch, the Blancpain Fifty Fathoms which he created in 1952. It was a near disaster that propelled him to create a diving watch. During a dive on the Côte d’Azur, Fiechter lost track of time and ran out of air. Only an emergency sprint to the surface, which not only violated the rules mandating a pressure stop but also risked possible fatal injury, saved his life. His epiphany was the realization that the diving world needed a reliable watertight diving instrument that could be used to time a dive. He poured his experiences as a diver into the conception of just such an instrument with inventions to seal the caseback and crown (both patented), a rotating bezel protected against inadvertent movement to time the dive with the minute hand, large white luminous numerals on a black background for legibility underwater and automatic winding to protect the crown. The Fifty Fathoms was the result, which, in addition to fulfilling his vision, was adopted by military diving corps around the world. So penetrating were his insights, that the Fifty Fathoms has defined the entire genre of diving watches ever since.

Fiechter’s energy and efforts focused on a timing ­instrument, while other dive pioneers in these early days devoted themselves to the different core elements of a diver’s kit. One such early trailblazer was Hans-Joachim Bergann in Germany. One year before the end of the war, Bergann began training to become a German Navy diver. When the war concluded, Bergann kept many articles of his equipment in order to continue diving as a hobby. As his gear wore out, he gravitated to the idea that he could fabricate equipment for himself and others. His first project was swim fins. Initially he was refused permission to manufacture the fins by the English Control Office which governed such matters in post-war Germany. The Control Office considered the product to be too military in nature and, therefore, forbidden to Germans.

The initial prohibition was later relaxed and Bergann entered the business of fin production followed by masks, snorkels, and, later, wetsuits and scuba equipment. He named his enterprise “Barakuda”. By the late 1950s, Barakuda with its catalog sales and distribution through third-party dive shops had grown to become the largest and most complete supplier of diving equipment and services in Europe.

Of course, occupying a prominent position on Barakuda’s sales list of essential diving gear was a timing instrument. Today diving watches are sold in Blancpain boutiques and watch retailers alongside all the other timepieces from the Blancpain collections. Beginning in the early 1950s, however, as a specialized piece of underwater gear, Fifty Fathoms watches were sold in dive shops together with the other core elements of a diver’s kit. The first dive equipment supplier to carry the Fifty Fathoms was Aqualung in France. Barakuda was not far behind in featuring Blancpain watches in its equipment collection. Over the years, several versions of the Fifty Fathoms watches were included in its general catalog of equipment. The most distinctive, however, was a special version commissioned by Bergann which is now referred to as the “Barakuda”. Linking the watch firmly to Bergann’s diving equipment business, the caseback of the watch was engraved with the name “Barakuda”.