Blog: George Mallory's Watch

I make additions and corrections to this web site frequently, but because they are buried somewhere on one of the pages the changes are not very noticeable, so I decided to create this blog section to highlight new material. Here below you will find part of one of the pages that I have either changed or added to significantly.

This blog entry is part of my page about the Geneva watch case making company of François Borgel.

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George Mallory's Wristwatch: A Borgel on Mount Everest

George Mallory's Wristwatch
(© Rick Reanier/Jochen Hemmleb)

Mount Everest was identified as the highest mountain in the world in 1856 by the Great Trigonometric Survey of British India. The first European to make a substantial climb of the mountain, to nearly 23,000 feet, was George Mallory during the first expedition in 1921. It was an exploratory expedition not equipped for a serious attempt, but Mallory discovered a promising route to the top via a northern approach. Mallory returned in 1922 for an unsuccessful attempt to climb the mountain and then again in 1924 for a third attempt.

The 1924 expedition left Darjeeling at the end of March, trekking overland and reaching their base camp location at the end of April. Setting up the higher camps and stocking them with supplies and equipment took up May. Two attempts on the summit were planned. The first attempt, without the use of supplementary oxygen, was made by George Mallory and C. Geoffrey Bruce on 1 June, but was driven back by harsh icy winds. A second attempt was started on June 2 by Edward F. Norton and Dr. T. Howard Somervell. Also climbing without oxygen, they were overcome by fatigue before they reached the summit.

On June 8, 1924, George Mallory and Andrew Irvine made a third, previously unplanned, attempt on the summit, this time using supplementary oxygen. They never returned. They were seen briefly through a break in the clouds by another member of the expedition, Noel Odell, who said they were only a few hundred feet below the summit. There has been intense speculation in the mountaineering community as to whether Mallory and Irvine actually reached the summit, 29 years before Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay did in 1953.

Robert Graves was at Charterhouse when Mallory moved there from Cambridge as an English teacher. Mallory took Graves climbing on Snowdon in the school vacations. In his autobiography “Goodbye To All That”, Graves writes that ... anyone who has climbed with George is convinced that he got to the summit and rejoiced in his accustomed way without leaving himself sufficient reserve of strength for the descent.

Mallory's Wristwatch

On the 1924 expedition, Mallory wore the Borgel wristwatch shown here. The wristwatch was found on his body when it was discovered in 1999. It was missing its crystal and was found in a pocket of Mallory’s clothing. There has been speculation that the wristwatch lost its crystal and stopped during a climbing manoeuvre, an arm jam in a rock fissure while ascending the second step, and that the position of the hands could indicate the time at which the arm jam took place. This theory is not credible.

This theory was evidently proposed by someone who knows little if anything about mechanical wristwatches. There is not a trace of damage to the wristwatch case, the bezel or the fragile enamel dial, not even the faintest scratch or crack, that would suggest the wristwatch had ever even been in contact with any rock. Any watchmaker or watch repairer would know this simply from looking at the pictures of the wristwatch, and would know that any suggestion that the wristwatch was stopped as a result of being damaged by being on an arm jammed between two rocks is ridiculous. The complete absence of any relevant damage to the wristwatch proves that this theory is simply and completely wrong.

The wristwatch has a high grade Fontainemelon movement in a silver Borgel screw case. This would have been an expensive wristwatch when it was purchased by Mallory. The suggestion that he would knowingly have jammed his arm into a rock fissure while wearing it, when he would surely have known that such a manoeuvre would damage the wristwatch, is also ridiculous. People knew that wristwatches were delicate precision instruments and treated them with respect. Today wristwatches are more robust, with steel cases and shock protection, but even one of today's tougher wristwatches would be seriously damaged by being jammed between two pieces of rock. Mallory would not have done it. If he was going to do an arm jam, he would have first taken off his wristwatch and put it in his pocket.

The wristwatch when found was missing its crystal, the clear front that protects the hands and dial, and the delicate tracery of the skeletonised luminised hands had rusted away leaving only stumps of the hands on the central bosses. These stumps are not visible in the picture because they disintegrated when the wristwatch was subsequently being examined. Apart from the missing crystal and rusted hands there is no other damage to the wristwatch. There are no marks on the silver case, on the bezel, or on the fragile enamel dial. In fact, there are no signs that the wristwatch has even been brushed lightly against a rock, let alone crushed between two rocks during an arm jam. If the crystal had been broken as a result of the wristwatch being crushed between Mallory's arm and a rock, then the fragile enamel dial, which is a thin disc of copper coated with an even thinner layer of white glass enamel, would show signs of this; they crack very easily. But in fact the dial of Mallory's wristwatch is perfect and has no cracks.

When the wristwatch was examined it was found that the balance staff pivots are unbroken and the movement is in good working order. Wristwatches of this age do not have shock protection for the balance staff pivots, which are very delicate and can be easily broken if the wristwatch is knocked sharply against a hard object. The fact that the balance staff pivots are not broken shows that the wristwatch did not sustain any such damage. It was reported that when the rusted stumps of the hands were removed the movement started ticking, clearly showing that the only thing that had stopped it running was the hands touching something or being rusted together, probably at first touching something and then later rusted together. If the hands had been damaged

The most likely course of events is that first the crystal was lost, that it either fell out or was knocked out. It could have been knocked out by a small impact that snapped it out of the bezel. This is quite easy if caught at just the wrong angle, but the lack of any damage to the bezel makes this unlikely. Or it could be that it was an “unbreakable” plastic crystal and the intense cold at high altitude caused it to shrink and simply drop out, a known problem with early plastic crystals. When Mallory noticed that the crystal was missing he would have removed the wristwatch from his wrist and put it in his pocket to protect it. Once in his pocket, without the crystal to protect them, the hands would have come into contact with the lining or other things in the pocket and been damaged, which would certainly have caused the wristwatch to stop.

All watchmakers and watch repairers know that if the hands of a watch touch either each other or the dial or the crystal, even lightly, the watch will stop. But otherwise it is actually very difficult to stop a watch that is running well. This requires either breaking the delicate pivots of the balance staff, or beating the watch flat with a hammer. The suggestion that an arm jam manoeuvre could have stopped Mallory's wristwatch without damaging the case or dial is utterly ridiculous.

Movement from George Mallory's Wristwatch
(© Rick Reanier/Jochen Hemmleb)
Click image to enlarge

An x-ray of the wristwatch showed that the main spring was not fully wound down when the wristwatch was discovered, which is thought to add weight to the theory that the wristwatch stopped as a result of some event. However, it is most likely that the wristwatch stopped before the spring was fully unwound because the hands became entangled with something in Mallory's pocket, or the material of the pocket itself, or were bent and touched each other.

The wristwatch, now in the keeping of the Royal Geographical Society in London, is a typical Borgel wristwatch of the period, the dust proof screw case invented by François Borgel of Geneva, patented in Switzerland in 1891. These were the best wristwatches for demanding conditions that were generally available at the time. They were more expensive than wristwatches with the normal style of hinged case and had been especially favoured by officers during World War One for the difficult conditions in the trenches, so it is no wonder that one found its way onto George Mallory's wrist. The wristwatch case is silver, with London import hallmarks including the date letter “u” for the hallmarking year 1915/1916. The sponsor’s mark is GS, showing that it was imported by the company of George Stockwell.

The dial and hands originally had radium based luminous paint to illuminate the hands and numerals in the dark. This appears to have come off or moved about during the years on the mountain; you can see how the remaining paint follows the outlines of some of the numerals, particularly the "2" and the "1" but also on the "8," "9," and "12". The brown staining on the dial is probably traces of this paint, and also the parts of the hands that rusted away. It is notable that although the hands were rusted away there was no noticeable rusting of the movement under the dial, the amount of moisture affecting the wristwatch must have been very small.

The splines on the "onion" crown are very well worn, indicating that the wristwatch had been well used; being a manually wound wristwatch it would have to be wound by this crown every day to keep it going. The wristwatch is remarkably undamaged considering its history, and it is reported that when the hand stubs were removed during its examination it started ticking.

The movement is a typical high quality Swiss movement of the period, with a straight line lever escapement, bimetallic temperature compensated balance and 17 jewels, cap jewels for the escape wheel pivots increasing the more normal count of 15 jewels by two. It is nicely finished with perlage (engine turning) to the plates. It was made by the Swiss Fontainemelon ébauche factory. Further details of the movement of Mallory's wristwatch can be seen on my Movement Identification page.

On the successful 1953 attempt on the Everest Summit, sponsored by Smiths and led by John Hunt, Sir Edmond Hillary and Tenzing Norgay wore Smiths Deluxe wristwatches. Norgay also wore a Rolex wristwatch that had worn on the unsuccessful 1952 Swiss expedition led by Raymond Lambert, which got to within 200 metres of the summit before turning back, leading to conflicting and confusing claims ever since. However, it seems likely that the first wristwatch carried to the summit of Everest was George Mallory's Borgel wristwatch.