Every swimming badge thus unanimously earned and stitched to its Speedo’s, B&R became a fashion-forward watchmaker favored as much by fighter jet pilots and bomb disposal teams as tortoiseshell-bespectacled architects, always with a formidable diving bell for the wrist somewhere in the catalog.

It’s especially technically impressive that the current 300-metre model comes dressed in the square ‘Instrument’ case, as water pressure acts unpredictably around a non-circular joint. Buy Now:

Tudor Pelagos

As loveable as the wildly successful Heritage Black Bay is, it’s ultimately a tribute act; a Now That’s What I Call A Tudor Submariner greatest-hits mix of retro details drawing from the days when Tudor fitted-out Rolex’s ultimate diving watch with cheaper movements, making them favorites of the American and French navies from the sixties to the eighties.

The Tudor Pelagos on the other hand, launched quietly in parallel to the first Black Bay reboot in 2012, was designed on a blank sheet of paper with a simple brief: make the perfect modern diving watch. Much like the Submariner back in 1953, in fact.

Nothing was overlooked and everything is just-so. Its potent cocktail of saltwater qualifications starts with the titanium case – a super-tough metal that’s incredibly tricky to engineer to divinxg-watch tolerances – followed by the switch from an ETA movement to Tudor’s own top-flight MT5612 calibre, adjusted to chronometer precision. Then there’s the use of scratch-proof ceramic for the bezel, meaning glances against coral, or brick walls inside trendy pubs won’t scuff things up. Buy Now:

Bremont Supermarine S2000

The restless action-man watchmaker of Henley-on-Thames ventures even further beneath the waves here, with a fresh new take on a collection named after the 1930s aircraft company, Supermarine, whose 1930s’ Type 300 waterplane won the Schneider Cup and paved the way for the Spitfire.