A silver date wheel with red numerals again is a nice surprising detail, keeping true to its predecessors. Another detail that can’t be missed is its sloped ceramic bezel insert (I’ve also heard stadium/coliseum/concave bezel used for this bezel shape when speaking with other watch collectors). This has been preserved in the new models, a great detail you don’t see anywhere else. The anchor moves around an axis point similar to an automatic rotor. Some may know that on many Rado vintage pieces the logo is a free-swinging anchor positioned at 12 o’clock. Its caseback is adorned with Rado’s signature triple seahorse and stars that can be seen on the original Captain Cook dive watches. An oversized arrow-style hour hand is used as has always been for past Captain Cook models and the dial, markers, and handset together provide great legibility. The brown sunburst dial has a nice vintage feel to it, changing in color and sheen depending on the angle of light hitting it. A sapphire crystal with an anti-reflective coating and a screw-down case back is used. The water resistance is still a robust 100 meters. Limited to 1,962 made, an homage to the year of the first production, this model has a case diameter of 37.3 mm with only an 11.1 mm thickness. They are inspired by the original Rado pieces from the 1950s and 1960s and this particular model draws on elements akin to its original 1962 Brevet cased counterpart. The particular Captain Cook automatic I’m reviewing is reference R32500315, one of Rado’s new Captain Cook models from their Tradition collection. For comparison purposes, at the time this was approximately 30% of the value of an entire ship! Cook praised the timepiece in his famous published journals and he used it to make maps of the southern Pacific Ocean that were so accurate many of them were still in use in the middle of the 20th century. Even more remarkable, the K1 cost £450 in 1769, and the original H4, the first successful chronometer was a whopping £400 in 1750. The marine chronometer successfully used by Captain Cook would revolutionize naval and later aerial navigation.
It was a major technical accomplishment, as accurate understanding of the time over a long sea voyage is necessary for navigation in the days without electronic or communication support.
This enabled Cook to calculate his longitudinal position with much greater accuracy by using the current time along with another known fixed location (say GMT). I know what you #watchnerds are thinking, I’m not in 7th-grade social studies class, where’s the horological significance with Captain Cook? Interestingly enough, on Cook’s second voyage (this time circling the earth in the opposite direction of his first voyage 🤯) he successfully used British watchmaker Larcum Kendall’s K1 marine chronometer, a copy of the first-ever produced (John Harrison’s H4 chronometer). He was the earliest to cross the Antarctic Circle, and on the opposite end of the world, charted the majority of the North American northwest coastline, determined the extent of Alaska, and closed the gaps in Russian (from the west) and Spanish (from the south) exploration of the northern limits of the Pacific. He achieved the first recorded European contact with both the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands as well as being the first to sail around New Zealand. On his way to being a captain in the British Royal Navy, Cook made three separate voyages to the Pacific Ocean in which he circumnavigated the globe, sailing thousands of miles across largely uncharted areas of the planet. Captain James Cook (1728-1779) was one of the most prolific explorers, cartographers, and navigators the world has ever known.
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