Vertex has created its first divers’ watch since the brand was reborn in 2016 under Don Cochrane, great grandson of Claude Lyons, who founded the business in 1912.
Vertex was based in the east end of London and became a major producer of field watches for the military in both World Wars and their aftermaths.
It is the only British business out of 12 producers to have made watches that have come to be known as the dirty dozen. Other dirty dozen producers included Jaeger-LeCoultre, Omega, IWC, and Longines.
It succumbed in the 1970s as quartz replaced mechanically regulated watches before being rekindled, again in London, making watches (in Switzerland) based on their military timepieces.
Vertex does not have a reputation for making dive watches, but did create a collection of automatics in the early 1960s.
The new Vertex dive watch, named M60 AquaLion, does not draw inspiration from that 1960s collection, but from another chapter in the Cochrane family history.
A decade before establishing Vertex, Lyon Cochrane set-up a watch business in the early 20th century called Dreadnought, which was symbolised by a mythical half lion half fish creature — the AquaLion used for the M60 line and which appears on its case back.
The steel 40mm watch, housing a Sellita SW300-1 automatic movement, is water resistant to the ISO 6425 rating of 600 meters and comes in two versions, with or without date.
They have a uni-directional dive bezel made from matte-finished ceramic and which, Vertex says, has knurling based on the sight adjustment mechanism found on the Bren light machine gun introduced at the start of WWII.
“Since I re-launched Vertex in 2016 — over a century after it was founded by my great-grandfather, Claude Lyons — I have sent our watches to all corners of the globe and have had hundreds of messages from owners around the world telling me of the adventures they have had with Vertex on their wrists,” says CEO Don Cochrane.
“Many of these adventures have taken place in or around water and, while the existing Vertex models are fully water-resistant and extremely robust, it seemed logical to enhance the range with a fully-certified, professional quality dive watch,” he adds.
The Vertex M60 Aqualion is sold with a steel bracelet, a rubber dive strap and a single strand ‘Zulu’ type strap.
The watches are selling online for £2,850 with VAT or £2,375 without.
