Some guys just get lucky while others officially have the Midas touch. For filmmaker James Cameron, almost everything he comes into contact with turns to pure gold—except of course his new Deepsea D-Blue Rolex divers watch. To commemorate their partnership with Cameron’s Deepsea Challenge, the luxury brand created the Deepsea D-Blue timepiece, a special edition collector’s watch. The one-man expedition displayed the adventuring spirit of man as Cameron and Rolex broke world records with a dive depth of 35,787 feet. While the watch is similar in every way to its black-dial predecessor, it’s the story behind the watch that leaves us fascinated.
For the Deepsea Challenge, Cameron partnered with National Geographic, conducting a dive that would take him to record-breaking depths in the ocean’s deepest area—the Mariana Trench. The director is himself an avid explorer with 72 submersible dives under his belt, almost half of which were to the wreckage of the Titanic. “I’ve always dreamed of diving to the deepest place in the oceans. For me it went from a boyhood fantasy to a real quest, like climbing Everest, as I learned more about deep-ocean exploration and became an explorer myself in real life,” Cameron told National Geographic. “This quest was not driven by the need to set records, but by the same force that drives all science and exploration … curiosity. So little is known about these deep places that I knew I would see things no human has ever seen.”
During this solo expedition Cameron wore his Rolex Deepsea D-Blue on his wrist while three large 51mm watches, made specifically for the expedition, were strapped to the outside of his submersible for experimentation. He reached a world-record of 35,787 feet while the Rolex watches resisted 12 tons of pressure on their crystal and reemerged unharmed, keeping time perfectly for the seven hour dive. The redesigned timepiece showcases this feat of exploration through its watch face, a blue color which fades from light to dark to represent the depth of the oceans. On its dial the word Deepsea is lit in a bright green color, the same shade as Cameron’s submersible. Like the original Deepsea watch, this special edition piece has a helium escape valve for deep-sea diving, a ringlock pressure resistance system up to 3,900 meters and titanium case backing.
