Don't miss the next drop
Active service was the promise behind the name. Girard Perregaux advertised the Seahawk in the United States during the Second World War as the watch for active service, and American print advertisements from 1941 and 1943 presented it as a watch for sport and hard wear. Girard Perregaux first used the Seahawk name in the 1940s, long before the word had anything to do with diving. The advertising leaned on the idea of a watch equal to rough use, the language a sporting name invited, a different proposition from the later modern dive watches. This vintage Girard Perregaux Seahawk carries a name whose advertising history began with active service rather than the modern diver.
The Seahawk people picture today is a different watch entirely. It is a large diver with its crown set behind a guard, a rotating bezel and the water resistance the word now implies, and it shares a name with this one and very little else. Later Sea Hawk divers gave the name a very different visual identity, with rotating bezels and guarded crowns rather than this example’s fixed bezel and plain crown. That distance between the early name and the modern instrument is what makes a vintage Girard Perregaux Seahawk of this kind interesting. We read the wartime slogan as the advertising it was, and take the watch as the quiet dress piece it is.
This example is reference B-1801 in a 32mm round case, 40mm from lug to lug on 18mm lugs. The inside of the back is stamped 10K GOLD FILLED BEZEL over a steel back, which is why we describe it as a gold filled bezel on a steel case rather than a gold watch. The gold colored upper case meets a steel back, and the applied markers and plain crown are gold colored like the bezel. The off-white dial has taken on a dense, even speckled patina, and it carries the Seahawk name above the hands. Arabic numerals at the even hours alternate with baton markers, small triangular accents sit outside a numbered minute track, and the leaf shaped hour and minute hands run with a central seconds hand that carries an open diamond. There is no date. The crystal is raised and domed, and the lugs taper toward the strap. The hand wound seventeen jewel movement is signed by Girard Perregaux and marked Swiss. It comes on a stitched black leather strap with a buckle and fits wrists up to 8 inches.
