How Deep-Sea Diving & Search and Rescue Ignited A Passion For Timepieces

Ben Lowry, AKA Submersible Wrist, was our first full-time hire and is a crucial part of W.O.E., responsible for building out our YouTube Channel, designing many of our custom tools, and writing tons of content every week. As a former commercial diver and US Coast Guard search and rescue veteran who went on to have an extensive career in the watch industry, Ben is uniquely qualified and a true believer in the Use Your Tools ethos.

Ben's Tudor Pelagos 39. Always read the caseback. (Photo Credit: Teddy Baldassarre)

Even though it’s easy (and enjoyable) to make fun of the Coast Guard, I still asked Ben to share a little bit about his background and his journey into watches. We all have a story about how we initially connected with watches, and Ben’s is a lot more interesting than, “One day, after a long day working in venture capital, I strolled into the Rolex boutique…”

The US Coast Guard, Underwater Construction, & Tool Dive Watches 

By Ben Lowry

In maritime search and rescue, seconds count, a lesson reiterated many times during my service in the US Coast Guard. Years before I joined, an interest in watches led to a fascination with the nautical world, which brought me to the Coast Guard and, after a few twists and turns, introduced me to deep-sea diving. 

Diving to locate a broken power cable off the coast of Chicago.

Watches weren’t the sole, or even most important, reason I chose this path, but my experiences in the maritime environment galvanized a lifelong appreciation for timepieces as tools. My interest in watches, now my profession, was molded by military service and commercial diving into a passion that would ultimately shape my career. 

Search & Rescue - Suicide Watch

An east-facing view of the Bay Bridge with Coast Guard STA SF in the foreground. A Response Boat - Medium is visible in the lower right corner. (Photo Credit: Sergio Ruiz/Flickr)

In 2013, a walkway officially opened on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge’s eastern span, making the 191-foot-tall section of the bridge accessible to pedestrians and cyclists for the first time. From Coast Guard Station San Francisco, the bridge and its new path loomed large, almost hanging over the rocky island I called home while on duty. The panoramic views of the San Francisco Bay afforded by the new walkway were exceptional, but we knew they would come at a cost. 

Across the Bay, the iconic Golden Gate Bridge was one of the most popular places to commit suicide on Earth, with an estimated 2,000 people jumping from the bridge to their deaths since 1937 and an average of 30 suicides per year. Compared to the Bay Bridge, the Golden Gate is taller and was, at the time, the bridge with pedestrian access. For Station Golden Gate, the USCG unit responsible for “jumpers”, it was an unfortunate and traumatic part of the job. Once the Bay Bridge opened to pedestrians, we knew it was only a matter of time before our unit had a similar problem.

Operating a Response Boat - Medium in front of the Yerba Buena Lighthouse near STA SF. (Photo Credit: US Coast Guard)

One afternoon in the summer of 2014, the search and rescue (SAR) alarm sounded throughout the station, along with an announcement describing a person in the water (PIW) in the vicinity of the eastern span of the Bay Bridge. As we hastily assembled a crew of four and boarded one of the Station’s small boats, we prepared for what we would find on the other end of our abbreviated transit. As the only EMT onboard, I braced myself and double-checked my medical gear, knowing whatever was about to happen would be my problem. 

When we reached the scene, we quickly located an adolescent female suspended a foot or two beneath the surface, her position marked almost exactly by a spare tire thrown by the same Good Samaritan who called 911 after seeing the girl jump. Pulling her onboard, I performed an initial assessment and began CPR with the help of another crew member. After 20 minutes in 50-something-degree water, not to mention the fall, the girl suddenly took a labored breath within a few cycles of CPR, her heart starting as mine almost stopped. Maritime search and rescue has a lot of bad days, but this was a good one. 

The Marathon GSAR I wore that day.

A couple of hours after transferring the patient to EMS, I sat alone on a bench in the station’s “wet room,” where we kept our personal equipment. Salt from the Bay had dried all over my uniform and boots, creating a white marbled effect. It was one of those “how did I get here?” moments, and looking down at the Marathon GSAR on my wrist, I knew watches were at least partly to blame. 

From The Midwest To The Sea 

My father and I volunteering at the Man in the Sea Museum in Panama City Beach, Florida.

I don’t think it was intentional, but my appreciation for watches stems from my father, whose journey into watch collecting began in earnest during my teen years. The old man, an Army veteran, was interested in the life aquatic and kept an impressive collection of books about diving, submersibles, and nautical history. I read the books because they were there and provided a nice break from my Midwestern existence. I also saw different watches on my father’s wrist, innocently thinking I wouldn’t catch the sickness, but that’s exactly how it starts. 

After being invited by the administration to stop attending college after not attending classes or completing any of the coursework, I worked in a bike shop in the Chicago suburbs as a mechanic. In my spare time, I began scrolling the nascent world of internet watch forums, quickly picking up the obligatory SKX007 as well as numerous G-Shocks and some early Mk II models. Like a lot of people in their early twenties, I eventually went looking for some kind of meaning or purpose, deciding the US Coast Guard was as good an option as any that might also satisfy my growing curiosity about the nautical world. 

Tool Watches In The US Coast Guard 

Living the dream as a Coastie E-3 in San Francisco.

I landed at the Coast Guard small boat station responsible for search and rescue and law enforcement in San Francisco Bay. I had no idea what to ask for in boot camp when filling out my “dream sheet” of desired duty stations, so I picked San Francisco, a city that constantly featured in the skateboard videos I grew up watching. To my surprise, I got exactly what I asked for, but I had no idea what I was getting myself into. 

Station San Francisco is among the USCG’s busiest units, responding to hundreds of search and rescue cases per year, anything from sinking or burning vessels to people in the water to drunken boat operators to the odd drug addict swimming miles offshore completely naked (it’s a long story). Service members are often required to wear a watch, and in the business of search and rescue, it also just made sense. Back in those days (2011-2015), getting your iPhone soaked meant it was toast, so wearing a watch was still the best way to track the time in a maritime environment. 

A USCG Diver wearing a Marathon TSAR or GSAR in 2014. (Photo Credit: US Navy)

As we have discussed here at length on W.O.E. and much to my chagrin, most of the watches I saw were not the analog, Swiss-made legends the growing watch nerd in me might have liked, more like G-Shocks and the occasional Timex Ironman. It wasn’t the norm, but I did occasionally see analog watches in use, including Seiko divers, a Rolex Submariner or two on senior officers, Breitlings and Bremonts aplenty on helicopter pilots, and an extremely beat-up Marathon TSAR or GSAR on a US Coast Guard Diver. Either way, these were still watches being used in the performance of meaningful work that made them feel like more than the sum of their parts. I was hooked. 

Watches In Commercial Diving 

Wearing a Vostok Amphibia for a training dive in Santa Barbara, California.

Having been into watches for some time but not long enough to be bitter and distrustful of luxury watch marketing, I left the Coast Guard and set out for commercial diving school, relatively sure that professional divers must wear professional diving watches, right? As it turns out, watches are rare on helmet-wearing commercial divers while they’re working in the water, but the culture of watches in the diving world is strong. In dive school, two of my instructors, both long-time commercial saturation guys, wore Rolex Submariners while another occasionally rocked a Doxa Sub, which was very cool to see. Maybe I was on the right track. 

Later, working in the field, the occasional old-timer or a senior company man might wear a Rolex or an Omega Seamaster, but seeing a diver enter the water with a watch was relatively rare unless they were going to be down so long they thought they might be curious about what time it was. In those instances, it was typically a G-Shock, F91W, or something else inexpensive, an afterthought. And then there was me, a watch nerd turned professional diver who was finally in a situation where I could put “professional” dive watches to the test, an opportunity I wasn’t going to waste. For every dive that wasn’t in contaminated water or sewage, I wore a mechanical watch. 

Reviewing a Scurfa while working in a river near Savannah, Georgia.

One thing led to another, and soon enough, I was writing reviews of dive watches for internet watch publications based on my experiences as a commercial diver. More than that, I started to understand that not all watches are created equal for actual diving, and marketing BS is quick to fall away in shitty visibility, cold water, or at night. Being a well-designed, carefully crafted thing makes a difference. My appreciation for watches as tools only grew, but the last thing I would have considered possible was pursuing watches as a career. 

Writing About Watches Is A Job? 

The thumbnail from a sit-down I did with Teddy Baldassarre talking about watches and diving.

As much as I enjoyed diving, the weeks and months away from my wife and kids took their toll, and I elected to go back to school to make a serious run at working in and around watches, full-time. My mistake was not anticipating the pandemic, and when I graduated in the summer of 2020, many formerly open doors had suddenly closed. I spent around a year as a Louis Vuitton intern and then employee, but the heart wants what the heart wants, and when then-budding YouTuber Teddy Baldassarre reached out to ask whether I might be interested in doing some writing for his rapidly expanding watch media operation, I quickly agreed. 

W.O.E. and I in Switzerland at Omega Headquarters. 

Three years and hundreds of YouTube videos later, I was ready for another challenge and the opportunity to return to my diving and military tool watch roots. I’d connected with W.O.E., and as he set off to grow Watches of Espionage into what it is today, he asked if I wanted to help. That’s “hell yeah” territory for me, and we’ve been preaching the Use Your Tools gospel ever since. For my own diving-specific outlet, I also operate @submersiblewrist, an Instagram account dedicated to watches, diving, and the life aquatic. 

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