BULLET POINTS
  • Rolex
  • “Oyster Perpetual Explorer,” on OEM 7206 riveted, hollow-link (non-expanding) steel bracelet with number “58” end links
  • Reference 1016 [1]; Caliber 1560 [2]
  • re Ian Fleming 1963 novel On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
  • Authority: Dell Deaton
!! NOTICE

As of Last update to this page, no note or draft manuscript has ever been found where Ian Fleming referred to the Rolex in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service as any sort of “Explorer” model, nor by “1016” as reference number. What follows under Investigation, below, then, is exclusive to James Bond Watches in terms of research, assessment, work and conclusions.

That said, this finding and related details have been widely endorsed, with a partial list including: Fionn Morgan [3], stepdaughter of Ian Fleming; as well as WatchTime [4], Chronos [5], Revolution [6]; and WristWatch Magazines [7], in print; Hodinkee [8,9] and Eric Wind [10], online; and the National Association of Watch & Clock Collectors [11].

PRESENTATION

Introduced circa 1959 and remained in production, albeit, following a number of incremental changes, into the 1980s [12]. It had a case diameter of 36mm and lug width of 20mm. Its gloss dial featured Radium indices in a combination of stick markers, inverted triangle, and Arabic numerals and the 3-, 6-, and 9-o’clock positions, under an acrylic “superdome” crystal.

The Rolex Explorer reference 1016 that was personally owned and worn by Ian Fleming featured a serial number of either 596351 or 596851, and was produced some time during the fourth quarter of 1960 [13].

!! INVESTIGATION

The first of two extensively vetted feature articles that appeared in highly respected industry publications, detailed this research and conclusions when first available. Following, then, excerpts from those pieces, beginning with the January-February 2009 issue of WatchTime.

Only one brand is specifically named as that secret agent’s watch in Fleming’s original 14 Bond editions: Rolex [14]. The greatest detail comes in his eleventh book, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, published in 1963. Here we read of the ‘big luminous numerals” that Bond sees when taking a lazy midnight glance at his chronometer, ‘a heavy Rolex Oyster Perpetual on an expanding metal bracelet.’ The watch is a Rolex Explorer I.

And not just any Rolex Explorer I. My research convinces me that it was Fleming’s own stainless-steel wristwatch, model 1016 with a black dial on a 7206 bracelet, case number 596851. Fleming’s stepdaughter, Fionn Morgan, believes it is the first and only Rolex he ever owned. After her stepfather passed away on August 12, 1964, the watch was locked in a bank vault. There it stayed until the death of her mother — his widow, Ann — in 1981. That was when, following almost 20 years in isolation, it once again saw the light of day.

‘Spookily, it was still going,’ Morgan said to me last May [2008], recalling the day she first picked it up. ‘I am told that this happens with Oyster Perpetuals; your hand sets them off.’ To her the watch was intensely personal, a family heirloom left by a man she loved as if her own blood-relation father. So she did what many of us would do. She gave it to her son-in-law, to wear daily as a touchstone with her past.

That’s how it went until preparations began for the ‘Ian Fleming Centenary,’ a year-plus celebration associated with the author’s 100th birthday on May 28, 2008. In particular, Britain’s Imperial War Museum (IWM) was planning a special 45-week exhibition titled, ‘For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming and James Bond’ [15]. Mary Gibson, Fionn Morgan’s daughter, loaned for show the Ian Fleming watch that her husband had been wearing ….

In total, there are approximately 100 references to James Bond wearing a watch in the Fleming novels and short-story collections published between 1953 and 1966 … [16]. Two-thirds of these tell readers nothing more than the time of day. This is particularly true in earlier novels such as Moonraker, Diamonds Are Forever, and Goldfinger, where Agent 007 mostly just looks or glances at his watch, on average nine to 10 times per story.

Function and design details come slowly. We hear Bond’s watch ‘tick’ for the first time in 1955. In 1957, we are told that, although he otherwise sleeps naked, Bond wears a watch to bed. Fleming used the word ‘glass’ when referring to its crystal in From Russia, with Love. For Doctor No a dial is not just ‘luminous,’ but blazingly so! In 1960, 007’s eyes follow ‘the gleaming minute-hand’ creeping past its time markers.

The Ian Fleming thrillers feature multiple James Bond watches … [17].

Fleming, too, had many watches …. But Fleming heirs told me last summer that his Explorer I is the only wristwatch known to have survived him.

Some Bond aficionados insist that Rolex is established as the definitive ‘James Bond watch’ in Live and Let Die (1954). I don’t think so. When Fleming settled on a brand, he tended to either repeat it or clearly label its replacement. We don’t simply read about locks, we read about Yale locks, again and again, in multiple novels. James Bond drives a Bentley or an Aston Martin or a Thunderbird, a specific car, as opposed to any car we might imagine.

That’s not the case with the 1954 Rolex. After Live and Let Die, almost a decade passed before Fleming gave Bond another Rolex. In the meantime, Fleming hadn’t forgotten the brand, since ‘a solid gold Rolex Oyster Perpetual Chronometer on a flexible gold bracelet’ features prominently as a bad guy’s watch seven novels later, in Thunderball ….

Secondly, the Live and Let Die Rolex is a divers’ watch; hardly what men wore daily in the 1950s [18] ….

Finally, the lack of any further specifics on this Rolex, and no reference whatsoever to the brand in his next eight books, classify it as a watch Fleming researched rather than experienced ….

This is more than speculation [19]. In a letter he wrote four years after completing his Live and Let Die manuscript, Fleming made it clear that Rolex was not at that time James Bond’s choice for a timekeeper ….

No particular Oyster Perpetual model was cited in [his] letter. Fleming simply repeated the ‘Rolex Oyster Perpetual’ reference in the reader’s letter [to which he was responding] …. But this event did not yet set the wheels in motion for his own purchase of the Explorer I. If the 007 watch had moved from a researched to an experienced item, we’d see a change in his writing. The next three books (written after the exchange of letters) feature just over a dozen notations on the watch Bond is wearing. All remain true to form, never going beyond a ‘gleaming minute-hand’ or a luminous dial notation.

Everything changes with On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, written in 1962 [20].

Thirteen percent of all James Bond watch references are in this one novel, more than in any other Fleming thriller. He cited the Rolex brand in seven places. As Bond expert and author Kingsley Amis generally observed, Fleming wrote ‘with an energy that shows [when] he’s dealing with something personally important to him.’

What was that?

I’m convinced that it was the deal struck with Eon Productions in 1961 to make five James Bond movies. The first, Dr No, began filming in Jamaica during the early months of 1962 — the same time Ian Fleming was there, writing On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. We know that cross-pollination resulted, because the virtually unknown actress who played the female lead in Dr No is referred to as ‘Ursula Andress, the film star‘ in the novel On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

Sean Connery, as Bond in Dr No, wore a Submariner …. It’s hard to imagine that Ian Fleming would have let the last detail of Bond’s Rolex model be determined by someone else. Neither would he have forgotten the 1958 letter that first recommended Rolex to him. As 007 followers know, it was another reader’s letter, from gun expert Geoffrey Boothroyd, which persuaded Fleming to have James Bond give up his signature Beretta pistol in favor of a Walther PPK [21].

In contrast to the sunny beaches where movie work was underway in Jamaica, the main action of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service takes place on a snow-covered mountain [22]. If you were going to pick a watch for such an adventure, what better choice than a Rolex Explorer, the watch that had famously conquered Mount Everest in 1953?

Bond’s watch is described as having “numerals,” as opposed to undefined markers. Fleming’s own Explorer I had luminous 3-, 6-, and 9-o’clock indicators.

‘Bond surveyed his weapons. They were only his hands and feet, his Gillette razor and his wristwatch, a heavy Rolex Oyster Perpetual on an expanding metal bracelet. Used properly, these could be turned into most effective knuckle-dusters.’ But this doesn’t mean the ‘expanding-link’ option offered by Rolex at that time. Fleming had established in Thunderball that ‘flexible’ was a bracelet with springs in its links. Fleming’s personal Explorer is fitted with the original 7206 bracelet; it has fixed links and a deployant clasp. Laymen describe this as ‘expanding’ to open.

Finally, Fleming specifies the 007 watch as new in Chapter 23 [23]. The Fleming Rolex case number 596851 suggests it, too, would have been a relatively new model 1016 that the author was wearing as he wrote this novel.

For the publication of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Fleming commissioned an oil portrait of himself, painted in 1962 by longtime friend Charles Amherst Villiers. It appears as a frontispiece in a special edition of 250 numbered copies of the book. I confirmed last summer that it captures Ian Fleming wearing his Explorer I, its dial reading 12:05.

So why stop at calling it a “Rolex Oyster Perpetual” in the novel when the name ‘Explorer’ was so evident on the face of Fleming’s own watch — the watch he used as referent while typing? Why not note the material as stainless steel, indulging his penchant for adding detail after detail? Of all Rolex models at the time, this one was identified with unwavering performance under the harshest conditions, an ideal watch to advance his characterization of James Bond. Why didn’t he identify it as an Explorer?

Because he wanted to give a wink and a nod to that reader who’d first recommended Rolex to him almost four years earlier. I think that was more important to Fleming. In this case, going no further than calling the watch a ‘Rolex Oyster Perpetual’ was, in fact, quite specific to him, more personal. His 1958 letter became notes for his 1963 novel (he hated to waste good material): On page 177 we see, ‘the Rolex transferred to [Bond’s] right, the bracelet clasped in the palm of his hand and round the fingers so that the face of the watch lay across his middle knuckles.’

Unlike the Live and Let Die watch, there is no question that this piece is James Bond’s choice [24]. He is concerned about its out-of-pocket cost.

During the debriefing with M, in Chapter 20 of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, ‘Bond lifted his left wrist’ to check the time. ‘Remembered that he no longer had a watch. That would certainly be allowed on expenses. He would get another one as soon as the shops opened after Boxing Day. Another Rolex? Probably. They were on the heavy side, but they worked. And at least you could see the time in the dark with those big phosphorous numerals.’ We see Fleming’s Explorer I on Bond for the last time (ever) on page 241, when 007 ‘glanced at the new Rolex on his wrist.’

Yet we still learn something: James Bond may continue wearing a watch after it becomes ‘old,’ as his friend Felix Leiter once observed; but when it’s time for replacement, he chooses new ….

Just prior to display of Fleming’s Rolex Explorer I at the Imperial War Museum, it was virtually all-original. On February 13, 2008, a Rolex service center had its first opportunity to make an assessment. The movement had rust and had been damaged by water contamination. Its bezel, and caseback were scratched, its 5- and 11-o’clock lugs were ‘marked.’ The crown was broken at the stem. The bracelet was strained, ‘clasp cracking at pin of blades.’

I was told before the museum opening that someone raised concerns about ‘protecting’ visitors from the radioactive material used to make its now-half-century-old dial luminescent. Stanchions and ropes were discussed as a way to keep the public at a safe distance. In the end, it was decided to replace the original dial that had illuminated so much of one great James Bond story ….

Beyond the foregoing, while the June 2009 article published in the NAWCC Bulletin: Journal of the National Association of Watch & Clock Collectors is an important read as a whole for its greater focus on the “How …” of the findings above, the following is called out from that below for what it adds to the Discovery piece above.

To revisit and expand a bit on my WatchTime feature, the Ian Fleming Rolex is a model 1016 Explorer …. It still has the factory-delivered 7206 riveted, hollow-link (nonexpanding) bracelet with the number “58” on its end pieces [25]. The mechanism is a Rolex 1560 caliber.

The original dial under the ‘superdome’ crystal of this wristwatch is what fascinates me the most [26]. It had indices painted with radium-226 ….

I wasn’t in London when the Fleming watch decision was made, but I’m told that concerns related to radium exposure came down to a decision that its dial be replaced prior to showing it at the Imperial War Museum.

The photograph of the watch that appears on page 89 of the February 2009 WatchTime was taken after that change.

So, in addition to being aged, the original dial would have only had the word “Swiss” below its 6 o’clock position, as opposed to “Swiss – T < 25,” as seen in WatchTime [the word “Swiss” was in all-caps, both instances]. It also had a minute-track insert. Finally, the word “Rolex” was in a slab serif typeface, and the crown logo had a more squared proportion than later versions of the 1016 ….

Last May 28 [2008] I was at the Lilly Library in conjunction with Ian Fleming Centenary commemorations. While there, I took time to pull from their archive an original On Her Majesty’s Secret Service Uncorrected Proof, which would have been printed shortly before that novel was first published on April 1, 1963 — almost six months after the October 5, 1962, premier of Dr No starring Sean Connery. I found that Ian Fleming had not only continued to make changes to On Her Majesty’s Secret Service well into spring 1963, but among those he’d made a key correction in reference to the James Bond watch.

But there was no effort to reconcile a consistency with the movie-Bond wristwatch. The singular “Oyster Perpetual” wording in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service could have easily been changed to “Submariner” at that late date. It wasn’t ….

In my opinion, there is indeed one specific brand, model, and configuration for James Bond’s first watch — just one. That’s what I’ve written about here.

It’s hardly a surprise to prove that Ian Fleming first wore the original James Bond watch ….

That answer required discussions with those who actually knew Ian Fleming, professional examination of his Rolex, physical contact with the author’s own James Bond writings, and a Geiger Counter. Even then, my proposal draft to WatchTime was substantiated by some 168 footnotes before going forward — a field assignment quite worthy of Agent 007 himself.

This is how I found the original James Bond watch.

INSIGHTS

As stated above, page, there is no evidence from Ian Fleming himself that the Rolex in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was an “Explorer” wristwatch, let alone that it had been the one that he had owned and worn — at least as of the date on which this page was last updated (as indicated below). Neither am I aware of anyone else having credibly established superior authority on this James Bond wristwatch (as substantiated in highlighted examples under References: Off-Site).

Additionally, while I have taken care to differentiate references (eg, in photographs) between the Ian Fleming Rolex Explorer and other pieces that, in 2008, had become more technically correct in terms of appearance as of the Imperial War Museum showing, I have determined that running two parallel “identification” tracks on this James Bond Watches website would more likely frustrate than clarify interests.

Thus, the two are mostly presented as one here.

RELATED PAGES

— Dell Deaton
Last updated: March 30, 2024
Published: May 8, 2008

ORIGINAL PHOTOGRAPHS: OFF-SITE
REFERENCES: OFF-SITE
  1. Vintage Rolex Sports Models
    2005 / Martin Skeet and Nick Urul, pages 69-73, and 79 (Schiffer Publishing: Atglen, Pennsylvania).
  2. Rolex Explorer 1016
    Andrew Hantel (accessed March 30, 2024).
  3. “Ian Fleming’s stepdaughter endorses James Bond watches exhibit”
    July 26, 2009 / Dell Deaton / James Bond Watches Blog (via Internet Archive, accessed November 25, 2010)
  4. “Found: James Bond’s Rolex” alt “Discovered: James Bond’s Rolex”
    January-February 2009 / Dell Deaton / WatchTime magazine, pages 10, 14, 18, 84-90, and 92-93 (Ebner Publishing: New York).
  5. “Hintergrund: Ian Fleming und Seine Rolex Explorer I” alt “Welche Uhr Trug James Bond?”
    March 2009 / Dell Deaton / Chronos, pages 92-99 (Ebner Verlag: Ulm, Germany).
  6. “The Agent’s Secret”
    2010 / Dell Deaton / Revolution, pages 132-135 (Revolution International: Port Louis, Mauritius).
  7. WristWatch Magazine
    May 2014 / Gary Girdvainis, Editorial Director, page 64; and Jonathan Bues, Editor-in-Chief, page 114 (Isochron Media: Monroe, Connecticut).
  8. “Dell Deaton explains ‘James Bond Watches’ at the National Watch and Clock Museum”
    September 19, 2010 / Benjamin Clymer / Hodinkee (via Vimeo, accessed January 9, 2024).
  9. “Reference Points: A Comprehensive Collector’s Guide To The Rolex Explorer I”
    February 4, 2022 / Jon Bues / Hodinkee (accessed March 30, 2024).
  10. “For Sale: A Rolex Explorer Reference 1016 Only 251 Serial Numbers Away From Ian Fleming’s”
    September 30, 2011 / Eric Wind / Hodinkee (accessed March 30, 2024).
  11. “How I found the Original James Bond Watch”
    June 2009 / Dell Deaton / NAWCC Bulletin: Journal of the National Association of Watch & Clock Collectors, pages 256, 307-309, and 312 (National Association of Watch & Clock Collectors: Columbia, Pennsylvania).
  12. Vintage Rolex Sports Models, pages 73, 79, and 83.
  13. “This Rolex watch was definitely tied to 2 different serial numbers”
    December 14, 2011 / Dell Deaton / James Bond Watches Blog (via Internet Archive, accessed March 29, 2024).
  14. “WatchTime feature article — ‘Discovered: James Bond’s Rolex,’ part 1 of 9”
    December 22, 2009 / Dell Deaton / James Bond Watches Blog (via Internet Archive, accessed January 8, 2024).
  15. “For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming and James Bond, 17 April 2008 – 1 March 2009”
    April 17, 2008 / Lucy Chavasse and Jane Acton / Imperial War Museum (via Internet Archive, accessed May 13, 2011).
  16. “WatchTime feature article … part 2 of 9”
    Ibid (via Internet Archive, accessed March 29, 2024).
  17. “… part 3 of 9”
    Ibid (via Internet Archive, accessed March 20, 2024).
  18. “… part 4 of 9” Ibid.
  19. “… part 5 of 9” (via Internet Archive, accessed March 29, 2024).
  20. “… part 6 of 9” Ibid.
  21. “Bond’s unsung heroes: Geoffrey Boothroyd, the real Q”
    May 21, 2009 / The Telegraph (accessed December 14, 2009).
  22. “WatchTime feature article … part 7 of 9” Ibid.
  23. “… part 8 of 9” Ibid.
  24. “… part 9 of 9” Ibid.
  25. “‘How I Found the Original James Bond Watch,’ part 2 of 3”
    February 16, 2010 / Dell Deaton / James Bond Watches Blog (via Internet Archive, accessed March 29, 2024).
  26. “… part 3 of 3” Ibid.