I have for sale this Men's Seagull Sugess Heritage Project 1963 21 Jewels Chinese Military Aviation 40mm Watch

 

Produced by Sugess, which belongs to Seagull. Seagull is producing the 1963 again as a project and part of its Heritage line.

Specifications

Band Material Type

Nato Canvas

Water Resistance Depth

5Bar

Clasp Type

Hook Buckle

Band Length

13.5inch

Case Material

Stainless Steel

Style

Aviation

Movement

21 Jewels Winding Mechanical

 

The story of the Seagull movement starts with the famous Seagull 1963 wristwatch that was first which received the ST19 movement. In 1963, there were three competing chronograph movement manufacturers in Switzerland: Lemania, Valjoux and Venus. Venus made the popular Calibre 175 column (or pillar) wheel chronograph movement that was used in several watches in the 1940s and 50s.

 

Venus needed money to develop newer movements so they first tried to sell their existing Cal.175 machinery and designs to the Soviet Union. The Soviets, however, already had the Strela chronograph movement (a copy of Venus’ Cal.150) which meant they weren’t interested. But the Chinese were.

 

Since the 1963 watch reissue, the movement has been gaining popularity and following in watch community. As it is basically a Venus 175 with updates. Sea-Gull bought everything from the Venus company, the machines, blueprints etc. that was used to produce the Venus 175, so basically it is the Venus 175 just produced in China.

 

Some people hear the words “Made in China” and think that it is poor quality, but in fact China is one of the best modern watch case makers in the world and many different watch brands have at least some parts made here. I've seen many China made watches for $500 that are far better than Swiss made watches in prices up to $2000.

 

In the 1960s the Chinese were importing all their chronographs from Switzerland and the Soviet Union. They wanted to remove this dependency so the Ministry of Light Industry kicked-off several projects to develop Chinese-made clocks and watches. 304 was the code given to the project that would develop, test, and source a Chinese-built chronograph wrist watch for air force personnel. (100-series projects were for the navy and 200 for the army.)

 

In 1961 Project 304 assigned the task of developing and producing this air force chronograph to the Tianjin Watch Factory. This was partly because Tianjin had already created a popular watch movement of their own but also because Tianjin (the city) is physically closer to Beijing than, say, Shanghai (and, therefore, the Shanghai Watch Factory).

 

Tianjin bought the Cal.175 machinery and designs from Venus and then upgraded the original 17-jewel movement to their own 19-jewel ST19 movement. They completed their second round of prototypes in 1963 and, for whatever reason, this is the year that gets added to the watch’s name when collectors outside of China refer to it. Inside of China this watch is named after the project code and is called the ‘304 Airforce chronograph’.

 

By 1965 these watches had met all the requirements and passed all the Ministry’s tests so an order was placed. In 1966 Tianjin delivered 1,400 of these watches to the air force.

 

Jump forward to 1990 and the Tianjin Watch Factory was promoted to a national level enterprise. This was followed soon after by the creation of the Tianjin Seagull Corporation in 1992.

 

(‘Sea-Gull’ was the brand name given to the export version of the ‘DongFeng’, ie ‘East Wind’, watch that Tianjin made in 1965 and started exporting in 1973. This ran on the 100% Chinese designed and manufactured Calibre ST5 movement and was the first watch ever to be exported from China. So it made sense to add the most internationally well-known brand to the name of the new company.)

 

In 2003 Seagull resurrected Project 304’s movements and, by 2005, had reissued the first batch of aviation watches.