Breguet Rebuilds the Marine 5517 And Marine Chronograph 5527 To Match Their Origins

Despite the extremely classical looks, the Marine is qualified as a sports watch for Breguet. It draws its roots traces back to Abraham-Louis Breguet's appointment as watchmaker to the French Royal Navy under Louis XVIII, but the current generation, which has been around for almost 10 years, always felt a bit off, with lumed Roman numerals, a signal-flag seconds hand and a lack of brand coherence. Well, Breguet just fixed all of that with a time-and-date 5517 and the Marine Chronograph 5527.

The cases haven't changed from the previous generation, which is a bit of a curiosity when you see how much the watches have changed. The 5517 is 40mm wide, 11.5mm thick, with a lug-to-lug of 47.7mm. The 5527 is 42.3mm wide, 13.9mm thick, with a lug-to-lug of 50.7mm. Both are available in titanium, 18k white gold or 18k rose gold, with the deeply fluted caseband, wave-shaped crown guards and single central lug that define the collection. You get sapphire crystal front and back, and a screw down crown gives you 100 meters of water resistance.

While they missed the opportunity to improve the large cases, they did not miss on the dials. Breguet swapped the old wave guilloché for a hand-engraved pattern called Quai de l'Horloge, first used for the brand's 250th anniversary, then coated it in translucent lacquer and encircled it with a satin chapter ring. The lumed Roman numerals are gone, replaced by applied Breguet numerals in 18k gold, and the logo is now an applied gold element too. You lose lume on the markers, keeping it only on the hands. The date moves to 6 o'clock on both wathces. On the 5517, the titanium version gets smoked dark blue with rose gold accents, white gold gets ice blue, rose gold gets black dials. The chronograph changes more: the lopsided three-register layout becomes two equal registers for running seconds and elapsed minutes, the date moves from 4:30 to 6, and each dial fades darker toward the edge. Grey to black on titanium, blue to navy on rose gold, ice blue to mid-blue on white gold.

The 5517 uses Breguet's calibre 777A, an in-house automatic with an inverted in-line lever escapement and silicon hairspring, beating at 4Hz with 55 hours of power reserve. The 5527 uses the in-house calibre 582QA, a cam-operated flyback chronograph, also beating at 4Hz with 48 hours of reserve. Both get bridges striped like ship's decking and a rudder-shaped rotor. Every version comes on either a rubber strap embossed with the Quai de l'Horloge pattern or a bracelet in the case metal.

The Breguet Marine 5517 is priced at CHF 20,000 in titanium on rubber, CHF 22,700 on the titanium bracelet, CHF 37,000 in gold on rubber and CHF 60,800 on the gold bracelet. The Marine Chronograph 5527 is priced at CHF 25,000 in titanium on rubber, CHF 27,700 on the titanium bracelet, CHF 45,000 in gold on rubber and CHF 71,100 on the gold bracelet. Both join the permanent collection. See more on the Breguet website.