Vulcain Nautical Legacy Massena LAB is a Fictional Heritage Reinterpretation

Love at first sight is a very real thing when it comes to watches. As collectors we know what we like and when we see a piece that ticks all the boxes it can give you that spike of adrenaline and excitement because yes, that is a damn fine watch. That was my first reaction on seeing the new collaboration between Vulcain and Massena LAB, which is appropriately called the Vulcain Nautical Legacy Massena LAB. It’s inspired be a Vulcain heritage model with Massena LAB’s immaculate finishing and design.

The Vulcain heritage model that inspired the new piece is the Vulcain Cricket Nautical, a watch launched in 1961 during the boom period of dive watch development. It was a record holder for reaching a real depth of 250m in 1966 when it accompanied one of Jacques Cousteau’s colleagues, Hannes Keller, on their trip into the deep as they revolutionised the world of diving. However, Massena LAB asked the question, what would the Cricket Nautical look like if it had been developed even earlier, in the 1950s? This makes the Nautical Legacy a kind of fictional reinterpretation of a watch that never existed.

When you look at legendary divers from the 1950s, especially from Rolex, one detail stands out above all others: tropical dials. You can read our full history of tropical dials here, but in brief a tropical dial is one that started life black but following a defect in its creation became discoloured over time. Each tropical dial is unique but the most common discolouration results in a warm, chocolaty brown colour. While they’re technically damaged, the historical provenance they come with makes them very desirable.

For the Vulcain Nautical Legacy Massena LAB, Massena LAB cut right to the chase and forewent 70 years of aging by producing a dial in the same rich, chocolate brown to give the impression of a tropical dial. Similarly, the lumed elements across the retro-styled hands and hour markers are beige coloured to sell the neo-vintage aesthetic, neo-vintage meaning a new watch that emulates the age and style of a vintage watch.

As for the display, it’s a double decompression timer dial, as invented by Hannes Keller’s team. That means the central portion of the disk is given over to series of concentric circles that tell you how long you need to spend on decompression breaks while resurfacing from certain depths, which is the traditional form of decompression timer scale. What makes it a double timer is that built into the table is an aperture where you can set your intended dive length and depths by rotating the inner display using the crown at 4 o’clock, which reveals the necessary break times for easy reference. So, there’s essentially two decompression tables on top of each other.

The hands have been specially designed for this collaboration watch and have no historic precedent. The hour hand is baton shaped, the minute hand features a triangle and the seconds hand is lollipop shaped. By featuring individual shapes, you can easily distinguish the three in low light conditions. There is a fourth hand on the display too, a red triangle hand, which marks the alarm function. All Vulcain Cricket watches are alarm watches, which is where they get their name from as they give a loud, clear sound like the insect. In fact, the original Cricket Nautical holds the distinction of being one of the first alarm watches you could actually hear underwater.

Powering both the alarm complication and the rest of the timekeeping functions is the Cricket Alarm Calibre V10, a manufacture movement from Vulcain. It has a manually-wound 52-hour power reserve. Interestingly it’s equipped with a double barrel system but rather than working in tandem, one powering the timekeeping functions and the other for the alarm. Both barrels are wound by rotating the crown, one when you rotate it clockwise and the other when you rotate it anticlockwise. It’s small details like that I love as a collector. It is worth noting the alarm calibre and double layer dial does result in a substantial thickness of 17.35mm for the case, though that’s balanced by the proportionate 42mm diameter.

In terms of price and availability, the Vulcain Nautical Legacy Massena LAB is $4,950 (approx. £3,880) in a limited edition of 25 pieces. That makes it pretty exclusive, which is appropriate because genuine, good condition tropical dive watches from the 1950s are rare, too. Between the story of the original Nautical Cricket and the fact this modern reinterpretation introduces a fun fictional element by adding a faux tropical dial, there’s so much horological goodness to bite into here.

More details at Massena LAB.

​Oracle Time 

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