Review: Tudor Pelagos FXD

A Tudor Pelagos, that’s been downgraded, built for the French Navy. Sounds like a joke, but it’s not. It’s one of the best watches Tudor has ever made. This is the Pelagos FXD.

Background

Tudor wasn’t just created by Rolex founder Hans Wilsdorf to provide cheaper alternatives to its consumer watches. The mighty Submariner, Rolex’s ace in the hole, doing duty on the wrists of commercial and military divers around the world, was also fair game. In 1954, the Tudor Oyster Prince Submariner was born, the first dive watch to bear the name acquired by Wilsdorf in 1946.

This was big news for armed forces around the world, eager to save a few bucks on their next timepiece purchases—especially the French Marine Nationale, who offered their services to help develop the Tudor Submariner into becoming a fully-fledged dive watch used by military forces the world over.

A bigger crown for easier winding, the addition of crown guards to protect against knocks, a blue dial for easier legibility and, in 1969, the now-iconic “Snowflake” hand, were all suggested by the Marine Nationale as updates to the Tudor Submariner. Many of those changes made it to the Rolex version as well, suggesting that it was the development of the Tudor for military use that inspired the evolution of the Rolex to what we know today. It’s worth bearing in mind that the first Rolex Submariner designed for the armed forces didn’t appear until 1971, long after the Marine Nationale had done their thing.

You could easily tell a Marine Nationale watch from the branding on the case back: “MN” for Marine Nationale”, followed by the last two digits of the year it was made. The last watch to be issued with that mark came in the early eighties—that is, until something unusual happened in 2021.

These days, Tudor is probably known best for its Heritage collection, looking back where the more mature Rolex looks forwards, but that isn’t to say that Tudor doesn’t still have a few tricks up its sleeves. In 2015, Tudor announced that, alongside its nostalgic Black Bay collection, it would be introducing an altogether modern dive watch, complete with trick features such as a helium escape valve in its titanium case, a luminous ceramic bezel, spring-loaded diver’s extension, 500m of water-resistance and an in-house movement.

This new Tudor Pelagos wasn’t just a cheaper product from the house to come from Rolex—it was a fully-fledged dive watch of its very own, the perfect partner to rekindle that historic relationship with the Marine Nationale—well, almost, because the Marine Nationale still had a few more suggestions left to go.

Review

Hang on—why would the Marine Nationale need a mechanical watch in this day and age? It’s a good question, and one I wondered myself when I saw the newly announced Tudor Pelagos FXD in conjunction with the Marine Nationale. Turns out, the answer is simpler and more sensible than you might think, and to get why, first we need to understand what the Marine Nationale wants with the watch in the first place.

The obvious answer is to dive with, and yes, that’s true—but then the FXD has lost its helium escape valve and had its depth rating reduced to just 200m. That’s because whilst the Marine Nationale needs it to go underwater with, it’s not to reach the bottom of the ocean, but to infiltrate by sea unnoticed. You only need to be a few metres under the surface to do that.

That still doesn’t explain why they’d need a mechanical watch, though. It does when you understand a little more about navigation underwater. It’s all very well and good using sonar and the like when you’re in a submarine, but by yourself in the freezing ocean and things get a little more complicated. Navigating in pairs, one diver chooses a heading, whilst the other sets a time with the bezel.

You’ll notice this one counts down instead of up, so the diver can set a time and know when it’s depleted, rather than knowing how much time has been accumulated. That’s because, instead of using the watch to know how long they’ve been drawing from their tanks, they’re counting down the time they’ve been travelling in a specific direction. Between the two, controlling heading and time, they can covertly find their way anywhere.

It might be easier to use some kind of GPS, was my first thought, but no—the signal cannot penetrate the water, not even a few metres down. And in any case, having a mechanical backup to any electronic device when you’re in the middle of nowhere is a godsend. Also a godsend are the new fixed lugs—hence “FXD”—joined at the bottom to ensure the Velcro-fastened fabric strap is going absolutely nowhere. The reduction in thickness from 14.3mm to 12.75mm isn’t a game-changer, but it’s nice to have. The removal of the date and the “Rotor Self-Winding” line of text on the dial may or may not be to your preference.

It's been some forty years since a watch last bore the Marine Nationale stamp on its case back, and to give it to the Pelagos FXD might seem like a cynical marketing ploy, but it turns out it’s not—at least not entirely. This luxury watch is genuinely usable in a modern context, has genuine purpose and was genuinely built to the specifications of the Marine Nationale. And that makes this watch very special.

I can only tell you how tired I am of seeing tenuous relationships built between watch and professional in an age where technology is king. A private jet pilot doesn’t need a Breitling Navitimer to safely deliver their celebrity cargo. A deep-sea diver doesn’t need an Ultra Deep to travel to the bottom of the Mariana Trench in a submarine. But the Marine Nationale have specified the Pelagos FXD to fulfil a real, practical need.

And there’s something about this that renews a feeling I had about watches a long time ago that I’ve not felt for a while. It’s simpler, purer, less cynical. It’s free of the complexity of the modern world, the tangle of misdirection and deception that we have to process each and every day. It’s something I can understand without having to second guess myself. The Marine Nationale needed a watch to do their jobs, and they got it. Job done.

I never thought I’d see the day when a watch was built for a purpose beyond the hypothetical. It’s great that brands like Rolex and Omega can challenge the deepest depths, but ultimately it doesn’t really achieve anything except one-upmanship. The Tudor Pelagos FXD, however, doesn’t need to impress anybody. It has a lesser spec than the original Pelagos, is £640 cheaper and comes on a basic canvas strap. It’s got nothing to prove except its suitability for the people who designed it, and it does just that. It’s for that reason and that reason alone that I think this is the best watch Tudor has made yet.

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