By Brent Robillard

June 1932. Off the coast of Brittany.

He has begun to count the pauses between the voice and its return.

Above him, somewhere beyond the cable, men are standing in daylight. They can turn their heads and see each other. They can put down a tool, walk to the rail, spit into the sea. He pictures this with an attention he has never given it before. A man walking across a deck.

The turret moves. He braces himself and waits for the wreck to roll back into the window.

There is just enough light to lose things in. A torn edge of plating appears, holds its shape for a moment, and slips away. He leans closer. The glass gives him a faint reflection of his own face. He would prefer almost anything else.

One hundred and thirty metres above, the ship shifts on the water. Down here, he feels the movement arrive through the cable. His shoulder presses against the enclosure. He waits for it to settle. There is room to breathe. There is room to speak. He has learned to keep his movements small.

The grab comes into view with its jaws open.

He gives an instruction into the telephone. Hears it repeated. Watches the iron descend beside the opening they have made in the Egypt.

Too far.

He tells them to lift it. His own hand rises uselessly towards the window.

Again.

The jaws disappear into the wreck. Mud lifts through the water and erases the little he could see. Now there is only the voice, and then the pause, and his breathing inside the turret. He thinks of the cable passing down beside the broken plates. He tries to remember whether he saw it clear them. The thought will not leave him alone.

He gives the order to close the grab.

When it rises, something pale catches at the edge of his vision. A hard corner under the mud. Then the load passes beyond the window, towards men who will be able to touch it.

He follows it with his eyes until there is nothing left to follow.

Then he asks them to bring him up.

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A watch with a long memory

Ninety-four years later, Squale has put the Artiglio name on a blue-dialled dive watch. There are 500 of them, each individually numbered, made with DRASS Galeazzi to commemorate the centenary of Roberto Galeazzi’s 1926 patent. The watch costs US$1,990 and is rated to 600 metres. It has an automatic movement, an orange minute hand, and a small device intended to tell you if moisture has found its way inside.

We will get to all of that. I keep thinking about the man in the turret.

Watch collecting encourages a fairly casual relationship with depth. We read a number on a dial and decide whether it seems adequate. Put a human being at the other end of that number, peering through a window at a ruined ship, and it becomes harder to skim past.

The opening above is an imagined moment. The operation behind it was real. Understanding what those men were doing makes the Galeazzi Artiglio considerably more interesting to me.

Alberto Gianna beside his diving turret — Italian diver Alberto Gianni beside the observation turret (Source)

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The ship beneath the fog

On May 20, 1922, the P&O liner SS Egypt collided with the French cargo ship Seine in fog off the French coast. Eighty-six people died. The liner settled upright in approximately 130 metres of water, carrying a fortune in gold and silver.

Ten years separate that sinking from the first gold brought to the surface. Even finding the wreck took years of effort. In 1930, the Italian salvage company SO.RI.MA., led by Giovanni Quaglia, located it with a team whose chief diver was Alberto Gianni. Their observation chamber allowed a man to descend and direct the work of equipment operated from above. The recovery ultimately continued until 1935, retrieving approximately 98 per cent of the strongroom’s contents.

The human cost extended to the salvage crew. In December 1930, the original Artiglio was destroyed during demolition work on the ammunition wreck Florence H. Twelve men died, including Gianni and fellow divers Alberto Bargellini and Aristide Franceschi. Gianni never saw the Egypt’s gold recovered. A replacement vessel, generally known as Artiglio II, carried the work forward.

The watch’s name belongs to a story in which the men who developed the methods did not all live to see them succeed. On June 22, 1932, the first two gold bars came aboard amid mud and debris. A contemporary account describes the painstaking coordination required: a diver gave directions over the telephone while the crew manoeuvred the grab. A small movement of the vessel could spoil its position. Explosives had opened a route through the decks, with the observer brought clear before detonation. Each descent required another careful look at what the work had achieved.

Vintage photograph of the SS Egypt — SS Egypt, John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland., Public Domain (Source)

Gianni and Galeazzi

The turret was an answer to an awkward problem. A diver needed to see the wreck closely enough to direct the machinery, while remaining protected from the surrounding pressure. His enclosure allowed observation and communication. The heavy work was performed outside it.

Gianni deserves credit for that practical arrangement. A history drawing on the Historical Diving Society Italia archive describes his first turret, built in Viareggio in 1927, and the subsequent collaboration with Galeazzi. In 1929, the design incorporated Galeazzi’s spherical construction. A surviving drawing bears a January 1929 reference to Gianni. Their contributions belong together: the working diver developing a salvage method and the inventor improving the enclosure that made it possible.

Galeazzi’s patent is more specific than the phrase “spherical structure” might suggest. The American document, which records an Italian filing on October 25, 1926, describes an elongated shell assembled from adjoining spherical zones, with circular reinforcing frames at their junctions. The intention was to make the shell carry pressure more uniformly while retaining a useful elongated form. It was a way of bringing the structural advantages of spherical curvature to something other than a complete sphere.

That is the invention being remembered in 2026. Its importance becomes easier to appreciate when you return to the turret window. Someone had to enter the enclosure and trust the calculation.

Patent from Galeazzi — Galeazzi’s US patent

How the names came together

Roberto Galeazzi died in 1956, and his son continued the business. Squale’s historical feature dates its absorption into DRASS to 1988. The company’s equipment and surviving objects preserve a lineage that includes rigid diving suits, helmets, and observation turrets. Squale developed its centenary account with historian Fabio Vitale, drawing on archival material to bring that history to a wider audience.

DRASS describes its own origins as reaching back to 1927. Based in Livorno, the present company works in subsea and hyperbaric technology for manned operations. This remains an industrial business concerned with the equipment that allows people to work underwater.

Squale’s contribution arrived later. Charles von Büren founded the brand in Neuchâtel in 1959. Alongside watches bearing its own name, Squale supplied other watch companies with water-resistant cases. Its shark logo appeared on dials as an indication of the specialist behind that construction. The brand also became associated with freedivers including Enzo Maiorca and Jacques Mayol.

I find the case-making history particularly relevant here. An enclosure is easy to take for granted until you consider what it keeps apart. For Galeazzi, it protected the person inside. For Squale, it protected the mechanism a diver depended upon. The scales and consequences differ enormously, but both businesses earned their place in diving through the construction of equipment.

Their first collaborative watch appeared in 2021. The Artiglio follows five years later, at DRASS’s request, with a historical reference that reaches well beyond a logo on the dial.

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Blue steel and a warning disc

The new watch looks suitably compact in the supplied photographs, although I have yet to handle it. Squale specifies a 39.5mm bezel diameter and 4 mm lug-to-lug measurement. The brushed 316L steel case has polished bevels, a screw-down crown, and a screw-down back engraved with the Galeazzi logo.

The quoted 12.6 mm thickness becomes 13.2 mm when the sapphire crystal is included. That is the overall figure I would use when imagining it on the wrist. Together with the 47mm length, it suggests a watch with some substance, even at this diameter.

The dial and K1 glass bezel insert share a dark Pantone 295U blue. The orange minute hand provides a clear point of contrast against it. Applied, domed hour markers carry Super-LumiNova BGW9. The unidirectional bezel has luminous markings as well.

The most engaging detail sits low on the dial. Squale calls it the Wet Indicator: a humidity-detection disc that changes colour if moisture enters the case. It recalls a feature used on early professional dive watches and gives the Artiglio a practical link to older underwater instruments.

Its job is to warn of a problem. The 600-metre rating still depends on the integrity of the case and its seals. I like the choice. It gives the historical theme a visible function, and it invites an owner to look at something beyond the hands.

Above that area, the Galeazzi diving-helmet emblem is screen-printed on the underside of the flat, anti-reflective sapphire crystal. Printing it there separates it physically from the dial and will likely create floating effect. It is an appealing use of depth on a watch so closely tied to the subject. How strongly the effect reads in ordinary light is something I would want to see in person.

The dial and K1 glass bezel insert share a dark Pantone 295U blue

A familiar movement for the work

Inside is an Elaboré-grade ETA 2824-2, presented here without a date display and with a 42-hour power reserve. It is a familiar choice for a mechanical tool watch. The absence of a date also leaves the dial free to accommodate the indicator and helmet emblem without another aperture competing for space.

Squale supplies two straps. The sand-coloured microfibre option gives the blue dial a warm, slightly weathered setting in the photographs. The second is matching blue rubber with a mosaic texture. Lug width is 19 mm, a detail to bear in mind if, like me, you are already thinking about the contents of your strap drawer.

The presentation includes a travel pouch and a commemorative bronze medal in a box decorated with the two companies’ historic branding. Pricing is CHF 1,590, EUR 1,890, or US$1,990, with 500 individually numbered examples available through authorised retailers and Squale’s online boutique. Canadian retail pricing was not included in the release.

Final thoughts

There is plenty here to interest someone who simply wants a compact blue dive watch. My attention keeps returning to that indicator and the helmet above it. After reading about the Egypt, I see them differently.

A dive watch is a small, reassuring object. You can hold it in one hand, turn the bezel, wind the crown, and examine the join between the case and its back. Everything is close enough to inspect.

The man in the turret had to leave most of his reassurance on the surface. Down below, he had a window, a voice on the telephone, and the workmanship surrounding him. Somewhere beyond the glass was the gold. Eventually, he wanted to go home.

That is a story I would be happy to carry on my wrist.