There’s a Big Crown, and Then There’s This: Introducing the Waltham Field & Marine Trench Watch

Watch Angels, a group that describes itself as a “crowd manufacturer,” has been around for a few years now. The way it works is relatively simple – you can think of them as a crowdfunding platform like Kickstarter, but focused exclusively on watches. Based in Switzerland, they’re a watch manufacturer that is happy to lend out their infrastructure to projects that the larger group settles on, with “Angels” committing to a project at a concept stage, eventually able to purchase watches at cost. Looking through their catalog and current roster of projects in various stages of completion, you’ll find a wide variety of mostly modern designs from independent brands and creators. One offering, though, stands out, and that’s the trench watch from Waltham. 

Waltham is a historic American watch brand, and in over 100 years of operation produced around 40 million timing instruments, and played a critical role in literally inventing watchmaking at a mass scale, modeling their factory network on that of Ford’s Model T production line. The company hasn’t existed in a meaningful way since the mid 1950s, so this release is curious in the way it resurrects an important American brand name. With so many watches from Waltham’s long history to choose from, it’s also interesting that they landed on the trench watch as the chief inspiration. 

The press release for the new Field & Marine Trench Watch states, with a little bit of shade, that it is based on the first waterproof watch “that actually worked.” While virtually every manufacturer that dabbled in water resistant watches in the WWI era makes a similar claim, looking at the Field & Marine Trench Watch as it exists today inspires confidence that they may have been onto something a century ago, as it borrows some key design elements from the original even though modern manufacturing techniques and new technologies have largely made them irrelevant. Those early trench watches took a three pronged approach to sealing the case off from moisture: a double clinched bezel, a threaded hermetic case, and a screw down crown. For the modern version of the trench watch, the design brief was to create a watch the way Waltham would have made one today. Now, some would probably claim that Waltham, an innovator in mass production and efficiency, would do what basically every other brand does when designing a watch for maximum waterproofness, which is focus on sourcing quality gaskets and a robust case, and not waste resources in the manufacture of an unneeded gimmick. 

Watch Angels, though, has a different idea entirely, and have leaned into a truly massive crown assembly on the 3:00 side, which they see as an homage to the original screw down crown created for the WWI era watches. A brass lever controls a bayonet system that locks the crown into place against the case, Panerai style. At a glance, the wearer can see whether or not the crown is locked or unlocked, which seems like a solution in search of a problem, but if there are throngs of watch collectors simply forgetting to screw their crowns back in, please sound off in the comments. Yes, this could be helpful for someone new to watches, but Watch Angels is right out in front on the Waltham Field & Marine Trench stating they’ve designed this as a “future collectible.” The end result is a watch that arrives at 300 meters of guaranteed water resistance through a rather circuitous route – time will tell on the collectible nature of these watches. 

Two versions of the Field & Marine are being produced, one with three hands a date running on a Sellita SW200 coming in at 41mm, and the other a dual time powered by a Soprod C115 with a 43mm diameter. Prices start at CHF 995 for the three hander and top out at CHF 1,595 for the dual time. Waltham/Watch Angels