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Most dive watches tell you the time and the elapsed minutes. The Squale Galeazzi Artiglio also tells you whether it is still dry inside. At six o’clock sits a Wet Indicator: a humidity-detection disc that changes colour the moment water finds its way into the case. It is the kind of feature that disappeared from catalogues decades ago, and it is the single best reason to look at this watch twice.
The rest of the specification is straightforward Squale: 39.5 mm of brushed 316L steel, 600 metres of water resistance, an ETA 2824-2 inside, no date. What is not straightforward is the run – 500 individually numbered pieces, at EUR 1,890.
In the shop: Squale Galeazzi Artiglio VONDSSGZBL.MI
A safety device from the first generation of dive watches
Before pressure testers existed, a professional diver had exactly one way to check whether his watch was still sealed: look at the dial. Early tool watches carried a small disc treated with a compound that reacts to moisture by changing colour. No workshop, no instrument, no guesswork – just a glance.
Squale has brought that disc back. On the Galeazzi Artiglio the Wet Indicator sits inside the Pantone 295U dial and is two-tone when the watch leaves the factory. If it shifts, water has got in. Nobody’s life depends on it in 2026, but very few watches at this price carry a component that actually does something.
The logo is not on the dial
The DRASS Galeazzi helmet is screen-printed onto the inner surface of the flat sapphire crystal, not onto the dial beneath it. The millimetre of air between the two planes creates a genuine parallax: tilt the watch and the logo appears to hover.
It is a small piece of showmanship that photographs badly and works beautifully in the hand. The crystal is anti-reflective coated; the indexes below are applied and domed.
What Roberto Galeazzi actually patented
In 1926 Galeazzi patented the spherical structure – an engineering principle for distributing extreme pressure evenly across a curved shell. The same principle produced his bathyscaphic tower, and that is where this watch gets its name.
In 1932 the tower was lowered from the salvage vessel Artiglio into the English Channel. At roughly 130 metres lay the wreck of the liner SS Egypt and her cargo of gold bars – worth an estimated 500 million dollars in today’s money. The recovery had been written off as impossible. It made headlines worldwide and earned Galeazzi the nickname “the Wizard of the Deep”.
For the centenary Squale worked with historian Fabio Vitale, president of the Scientific Committee of the Fondazione Artiglio, whose research in the Galeazzi archives brought engineering detail into public view for the first time.
Case, movement, 600 metres
- Case: 39.50 mm bezel diameter, 47 mm lug to lug, 12.6 mm thick (13.2 mm including the crystal), 19 mm lug width
- Material: brushed 316L stainless steel with polished bevels
- Water resistance: 600 metres, screw-down crown, screw-down case back
- Crystal: flat sapphire with anti-reflective coating
- Bezel: unidirectional, flat K1 glass insert in Pantone 295U
- Movement: ETA 2824-2 automatic, Elaboré grade, no date, 42-hour power reserve
- Lume: Super-LumiNova BGW9 on indexes, hands and bezel
- Warranty: two years
39.5 mm across and 47 mm long is a forgiving set of numbers. This is a 600-metre diver that will sit flat on a 17 cm wrist, which is not something you can say about most of them. Leaving out the date keeps the dial symmetrical and gives the Wet Indicator room to breathe.
Two straps, two seasons
The watch ships on a sand-coloured microfibre strap with a deliberately vintage texture, and comes with a second blue rubber strap in a mosaic pattern, matched to the dial and bezel. Warm beige against cold blue is what makes the first combination work; the rubber turns the same watch into a summer piece.
Wrist size runs from 16.5 to 21.5 cm. Both straps are 19 mm at the lugs, an awkward width if you plan to go shopping for alternatives.
Lume
BGW9 glows blue-green and reads almost white in daylight, which is why a dial carrying this much luminous material still looks crisp rather than creamy. Indexes, hands and the bezel minute track all light up together.
Inside the box: a canvas roll and a bronze medal
The packaging is part of the story. The box is cardboard, deliberately aged, printed with the historic DRASS Galeazzi and Squale logos. Inside is a canvas travel pouch, and inside that a bronze medal – the Galeazzi diving helmet on one face, the old Squale logo on the other.
500 pieces, individually numbered
The Squale Galeazzi Artiglio is EUR 1,890 (CHF 1,590 / USD 1,990), limited to 500 individually numbered pieces, reference VONDSSGZBL.MI, with a two-year warranty. It is sold through authorised retailers – including my own shop – and the Squale boutique.
Galeazzi devoted his life to perfecting tools for the impossible. We dedicate ours to carrying that mission forward. This watch is both a tribute and a continuation.
Andrea Maggi, CEO of Squale
My take
I am a fan of this one, plainly. It wears the way a Squale should – 39.5 mm, low enough, nothing digging in, nothing tipping over. What got me is the colour: that blue, the vintage beige strap against it, and one orange minute hand as the only accent. For me it is one of the highlights of this autumn.
The second strap effectively gives you two watches in one box, and the bronze medal is the sort of thing nobody needs and everybody enjoys – it tells you somebody thought about the whole package. The Wet Indicator does the same job on the dial: a component with a story instead of decoration.
And then there is the number. 500 pieces worldwide, each one numbered. For a brand with this history, at this price, that is not a lot. If you want one, do not think about it for too long.
In the shop: Squale Galeazzi Artiglio VONDSSGZBL.MI – EUR 1,890, 500 pieces worldwide
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Every Squale I have in stock is in the WATCHDAVID Shop.
Want the whole Squale story? From case making in 1950 to the Marina Militare — I have put it all together: Squale Watches: Nothing But Dive Watches Since 1959.
Prefer moving pictures? My Squale videos — reviews, tests, wristrolls and new releases — are in this playlist.
Since 2023 I, David Drilling of WATCHDAVID, have been an authorised Squale dealer and sell the brand in my own shop at watchdavid.shop: all Squale diving watches at WATCHDAVID.
