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It was the last dive of the week and I was trying to stay shallow, casually kicking a few feet over the reef on a dive site, ominously named “Witch’s Cauldron”. The flight home was in 20 hours and, after a week of some deep dives, I didn’t want to risk fizzing into fits of the bends on the flight to Dallas. It had been an amazing week underwater. The legendary clear Bahamian waters lived up to their reputation and we had seen sharks on every dive, some following us like wary dogs. They were Caribbean reef sharks, some approaching six feet, sleek and purposeful in their endless search for a next meal. We had heard rumors of hammerheads in these waters off the outermost island of San Salvador and indeed some in our group had spotted a couple, swimming far off the wall in deep water. But I would have to wait until next time to get my chance. The bezel on my Bremont Supermarine 2000 told me it was time to make the turn back to the boat and, with some regret, I reluctantly headed for the mooring line.
When Bremont offered to send their newest dive watch, the Supermarine 2000 ($5,900), for a review, I wanted to give this timepiece a fittingly rigorous program. After all, the company’s tagline is “Tested Beyond Endurance”, and some of its watches had accompanied adventurers on polar expeditions and round-the-world motorcycle journeys. The Supermarine 2000 is arguably Bremont’s most rugged and capable watch to date. Its chronometer-certified movement is surrounded with a patented floating carrier, making it highly resistant to the effects of shock and vibration, a technology proven out in the company’s Martin-Baker watches, which have been tested on equipment used to test fighter jet ejection seat components. The movement is also encased inside an anti-magnetic Faraday cage which protects it against harmful magnetic influence. And while Bremont’s Supermarine 500 already boasted an impressive water resistance of 500 meters, the newest diver is rated to four times as deep. Of course, for a dive watch, all these features, while impressive on paper, are worthless if the watch doesn’t perform well underwater. So it was time to take it diving.
For a watch so ruggedly built, the Supermarine 2000 has a refinement befitting a timepiece born in England.
The Bahamas are made up of over three thousand islands and are only an hour’s plane ride from Miami, so it sees a predictably high number of American tourists. Most stop in Nassau, where they bake on the beaches and queue up for endless resort buffets. But the Out Islands are wild and remote, accessible mostly by small turboprop puddlejumpers that land on short weedy airstrips. San Salvador Island is the furthest east of the Out Islands and reputed to be the first landfall for Christopher Columbus in 1492. More recently, it was a strategic U.S. military outpost during the Cold War, a listening post at the spot where Soviet ships made a hard left turn to head towards Cuba. Thick communication cables can still be seen draped over the steep reef walls heading to Florida. Topside, San Salvador Island is barren and sparsely populated. But its position out on the Continental Shelf makes for some of the world’s most spectacular wall diving.
For a watch so ruggedly built, the Supermarine 2000 has a refinement befitting a timepiece born in England. The case, now swollen to 45 millimeters, is a three-part design Bremont calls “Triptick” and features lugs that twist down with alternating brushed and polished surfaces, contrasting the black, textured center barrel. A crown guard is bolted on with tiny hex screws, terminating in the crown, which resides at a comfortable two o’clock position. The dial manages to strike a balance that can only be described as “functionally elegant”. Huge applied markers have an almost military appearance, and their blue luminescence proved up to the task on a night dive, glowing reassuringly as ghostly sharks cruised past just at the edge of my light beam. The hands are distinctive, falling somewhere between Rolex and Big Ben — delicate but easy to read at a glance. The sweep seconds hand now features a round lume flag, which addresses perhaps the only quibble people had with the watch’s predecessor, the Supermarine 500. The center of the dial is a textured pinstripe surrounded by a railroad track minute scale and a depth rating in a subtle touch of red.
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