Smiths De Luxe: Hillary's Everest Watch

Aroma shares his first watch acquisition of 2012, delving into the fascinating and often overlooked history of the 1953 Everest expedition. He highlights the lesser-known fact that Sir Edmund Hillary wore a Smiths De Luxe, not a Rolex Explorer, to the summit, providing valuable context to the narrative of exploration watches.

For a start, please accept my apologies as little of the following has anything to do with Omega but it does involve my first watch purchase of 2012 – so please stay with me and read on.

Way way back in the dim and distant past of 1953 when I suspect most of you were not around (I was though!!) and in the days when men were real men and watches were small things that you wore on your wrist to tell the time of day, an expedition led by Colonel John Hunt set out from England with the aim of conquering one of the last obstacles to mankind – the climbing of Mount Everest.  Many had attempted this and all had failed.

Rolex, being Rolex spotted an opportunity to maximize publicity of their watches and sponsored the expedition by donating several special ‘rugged’ watches that were able to withstand the knocks and scrapes of the climb and the particularly low temperatures which would be encountered.  This watch later became known as the Rolex Explorer.

High up the mountain, Hunt selected two climbing pairs to attempt the summit.  The first pair, Tom Bourdillon and Charles Evans set out on May 26 but were forced to turn back after becoming exhausted.  The next day (May 27) the expedition made its second and final assault on the summit with the second climbing pair - New Zealander, Edmund Hillary and the Nepalese Sherpa, Tenzing Norgay - and eventually reached the summit at 11.30 am.  They spent only 15 minutes on the summit as their oxygen supplies were getting low and they had concerns about it lasting for their descent

So, Rolex managed to get their watch to the summit and made a big thing of it as usual – but it was on the wrist of Sherpa Norgay.  What is generally little known is that Edmund Hillary didn’t wear a Rolex – he wore a bog-standard Smiths De Luxe – a manual wind,15 jewel, sub second dial Smiths movement in a Dennison Aquatite case with a chromed brass top and a stainless steel screw threaded case back.

You must know by now from previous posts that I am something of a Dennison nut and so when the watch below became available, I just had to snap it up.  What is it?  It is the exact same model that Edmund Hillary wore – a 1954 Smiths De Luxe with the 15 jewel sub second movement in the genuine chromed brass and stainless steel Aquatite case.

What amazes me is that despite a bit of ‘brassing’ and a few scratches, this near 60 year old is in just lovely condition and keeps time to within 20 secs/day.

The irony in all this is that if I had acquired the 1953 Rolex model, I would be able to sell it and buy a small Caribbean Island with the proceeds but alas this Smiths cost me less than a lunch out with the wife.

Hey Ho, that's life

Cheers

Andrew