This search and rescue mule is tough as old boots
WORDS MARK McARTHUR-CHRISTIE
GLASHÜTTE HAS MORE watchmakers per square kilometre than anywhere else in the world. From Mühle’s workshop on Altenberger Strasse, you need to walk past Wempe, Lange, Nomos and the German Watch Museum just to get to the local cake shop. And that’s in a town of barely 7300 inhabitants. Despite this, Mühle-Glashütte is hardly well-known outside horophile circles. This lack of knowledge needs redressing. Let’s start with its Rescue Timer.
If you were going to buy a single watch, this could be The One simply because whatever you do to it, it’ll be just peachy. There are Atlantic Wall bunkers that look flimsy in comparison. For goodness’ sake, even the crystal is thicker than a couple of 50p coins stacked on top of each other. All this grrr stuff is because the Rescue Timer is a watch with a job to do.
Designed for the German Maritime Search and Rescue Service, the brief was ‘make us a watch that we can run over with a supertanker, strap to a crash-diving submarine and we don’t care what it looks like, OK?’ So see that black band around the case? A rubber impact absorber. Four o’clock shrouded crown? So you don’t need to worry about snagging it on someone’s clothes when you’re pulling them out of the North Sea. Screw-in strap bars? You don’t want to lose your watch in 500m of water (and it’s good for twice that depth). Mühle even replaced the screws in the movement, an automatic SW 200-1 Sellita, with blued versions because they’re more resistant to corrosion. Get a well-used watch from £900 up to £13,000 for the wonderfully daft 70g 18ct gold commemorative model.
NEW WATCHES
DAN HENRY RACING CHRONOGRAPH 1962
If you ever get the chance to listen to Dan Henry, do it. Yes, Dan really exists behind the brand and, over the 30-plus years he’s been combing antiques fairs and flea markets, he’s amassed an encyclopaedic knowledge that he loves to pass on, along with his enthusiasm. His approach is unique: ‘I came up with a crazy project: make some beautiful watches such as the ones I was lucky to own, b
