Skilled Diver Nigel Band and the Uncommon Rolex Sea-Dweller and Oyster Perpetual Fashions that Plumbed the Depths and Scaled the Heights – Reprise – Niraranra

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At one different event a journalist sought to “troll” Sir Edmund Hillary by asking him to the touch upon speculation that George Mallory had in actuality summited Everest in 1924 sooner than dying on the descent. To which Hillary responded, in generally laconic type, that he’d had a rattling good run as conqueror of Everest and may be pretty blissful to let one other particular person take over.

George Band continued to play an energetic operate inside the worldwide mountaineering group and with Himalayan organizations for the rest of his life, writing quite a lot of books and being awarded the OBE in 2009 in recognition of his firms to mountaineering.

His achievements are too many to enumerate proper right here, nonetheless embrace his participation on the worthwhile 1953 Everest expedition and what was his crowning glory, the 1955 conquest of the “Ultimate Good Mountain,” Kangchenjunga, together with Mancunian builder Joe Brown.

As is correctly documented, Rolex had been equipping mountaineering expeditions with watches for some years, and the Everest group carried 13 Oyster Perpetual licensed chronometers with them in full, six supplied for the 1952 Cho Oyu expedition and seven for the model new members of the 1953 group. George Band’s Oyster Perpetual Reference 6098 was certainly one of many latter.

This mannequin of the Oyster Perpetual choices the domed “bubble-back” case, required to allow room for the automated winding rotor mounted on what was initially a handbook movement. It was not until the slimmer 1030 movement was launched, designed from scratch as a self-winding movement, that the Oyster Perpetual and the Explorer boasted flat case backs.

The once more of this particular watch is engraved “EVEREST 1953” and “G.C. BAND,” with a fainter engraving of the Rolex crown and “H6” indicating that it was amount six of the second batch of watches supplied to the expedition group by Rolex.

George Band’s totally different Rolex: 1953 Rolex Oyster Precision with “Explorer dial”

Kangchenjunga was as quickly as believed to be the very best mountain on the planet and deemed unclimbable. Even after it was determined that K2 and Everest had been elevated, it remained most likely essentially the most daunting of the three for mountaineers and stays to be honored by the native inhabitants as a result of the holiest of mountains.

Kangchenjunga and its satellite tv for pc television for computer peaks kind an infinite mountain massif of 5 peaks that straddle the border between India and Nepal.

Extreme local weather circumstances and extreme avalanche menace on account of its proximity to the Bay of Bengal made it what Everest chief Sir John Hunt known as “most likely essentially the most robust feat in mountaineering.”

George Band on the western technique to Kangchenjunga, 1955 (image courtesy Royal Geographical Society)

Setting up on a route carved out virtually 50 years earlier by devil worshipper and (barely incongruously) enthusiastic mountaineer Aleister Crowley, aka “the wickedest man in Britain,” George Band and Joe Brown summited Kangchenjunga on May 26, 1955, usually reported as “stopping merely wanting the peak out of deference to native non secular beliefs.”

The expedition had been deliberate as a reconnaissance journey with a view to summiting in 1956, and the group had solely obtained permission from the Chogyal of Sikkim to find Kangchenjunga on the ultimate second on the understanding that they’d go nowhere near the best.

For this expedition Rolex had given George Band a black-dial Oyster Perpetual Precision Reference 6150 with the now-familiar 3-6-9 dial and Mercedes arms.

The success of the Kangchenjunga expedition and the reality that the first Explorer fashions had syringe arms for the first 18 months (to not level out the reality that neither Hillary nor Tenzing had been carrying Rolex watches on the peak of Everest, as has now been confirmed) completely makes it the true spiritual ancestor of the Rolex Explorer barely than the Oyster Perpetuals utilized by the Everest group. This watch was supplied at a Phillips public sale by the Band family in 2017.

The Kangchenjunga Rolex 6150, an Explorer in all nonetheless title (image courtesy Eszter Faykiss/Loupiosity)

George Band handed away in 2011 on the age of 82, having taken half in a Kangchenjunga reunion expedition inside the Himalayas on the tender age of 76 and reconquering the Breithorn with the Alpine Membership aged 78.

His Oyster Perpetual now belongs to Nigel, who wears it generally, nonetheless on the Fixoflex bracelet that his father hottest for every of his mountaineering watches.

Nigel completely understands the importance of sustaining the Oyster Perpetual in fully genuine state of affairs – merely as his Sea-Dweller, which stays to be a working instrument watch, has been maintained in working state of affairs for the intention for which he bought it.

Nigel Band’s 1986 Rolex Sea-Dweller and 1952 Rolex Oyster Perpetual (image courtesy Nigel Band)

Nigel remembers that his father wore every the Oyster Perpetual and the Precision continually all by means of his childhood, with a selection for the black-dial Precision on account of its larger legibility.

That they had been solely retired from energetic service when somebody supplied him with a newfangled digital timepiece with a built-in altimeter. This proves which you’ll convey the mountaineer down from the mountain, nonetheless you’ll be capable of’t take the mountain away from the mountaineer.

I requested Nigel whether or not or not his father’s love of mountaineering had rubbed off on him in any technique. “Unlikely, I’ve achieved some hillwalking inside the UK nonetheless previous that I merely don’t have a head for heights – I’d lots barely be underwater!”

It is likely to be a coincidence, nonetheless it’s curious that of their fully fully totally different chosen fields, every father and son ended up carrying respiration tools and Rolex watches.

* This textual content was first printed on November 25, 2020 at Skilled Diver Nigel Band And The Uncommon Rolex Sea-Dweller And Oyster Perpetual Fashions That Plumbed The Depths And Scaled The Heights.

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