Patria Trench Watch

Patria Trench Watch

For the first featured watch, it only makes sense to discuss one of the first trench watches I purchased (or should I say the father of my collection), my Patria.  There are a lot of misconceptions about the Patria brand many (especially on ebay) equating it with the storied Omega brand perhaps to generate the highest possible auction price for their Patria wares.  Let me cut to the chase - a Patria Trench Watch is a very good watch with a quality movement but it is not an Omega.   Some may disagree with me and I am open and desirous of hearing their reasoning, but having done a bit of internet sleuthing on this topic, I am reasonably confident in my conclusion. 

I bought this watch off of ebay several years ago.  It was in partially functioning condition meaning it would tick occasionally but not regularly and reliably.  The 33mm case had a heavy patina, the dial was dirty because of flaking old lume, and, if I recall, there was an issue with one of the hands being partially broken. The crystal was pretty much shot as well having been irradiated by the lume to a lovely canary yellow. I polished the nickel alloy case to a chrome-like shine (it is not chrome plated as chrome plating was not yet being used industrially).  I cleaned the dial, which unlike many, if not most trench watches from the era, has no cracks, not even hairline cracks. 

The dial is also clearly marked "Patria".   This is interesting because neither the movement nor the case are so marked.  The movement and the case are marked "Sada Watch Co.".  Is this really a Patria or a Sada that had a Patria dial added later?  I think the former: my research indicated that mine is not the only Patria watch with a Sada labeled movement.  Someone from Canada was selling a similar Patria watch with a WWI pedigree on ebay a while back.

Is the movement a Sada movement and who is Sada.  Information on Sada has been a bit difficult to track down.  As best I can tell, they were an association of watch makers that eventually conglomerated.   They could purchased the Patria brand or Patria could have just purchased movements from Sada. 

But let's throw another wrench into all of this: Sada isn't the manufacturer of the movement. The movement was made by  Fountainemelon S.A. How do I know? Well, a couple of trench watch aficionados from the Netherlands, Koen Vermeij and Leo van Rijn, recently published a book about size 30 trench watch movements, which has been an invaluable resource in identifying the ebauche manufacturer.    Here is a link for the book: https://www.amazon.com/Early-Swiss-Wristwatches-their-Manufacturers/dp/9462330654/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1529533977&sr=11&keywords=early+swiss+wrist+watches+and+their+manufacturers.

Here is the thing, most trench watches made in the teens were not branded and often even the ebauche manufacturer did not brand the movement.  Presumably, the watches themselves were assembled by a number of "manufacturers" and distributed.  The manufacturer, as best I can tell, sourced a movement, hands, a crown and a case and assembled the whole thing together and shipped it off to its intended destination.  I think Sada was such a "manufacturer".

The one glaring exception to the no branding convention for Swiss made watches where those being sent to the U.S. where the concept of watch branding was alive and well.  U.S. made Waltham, Eglin, Hamilton and others had long been sold as from and branded by the respective manufacturers.  To compete in the U.S. market branding was necessary: presumably blank dialed watches didn't sell well here. 

There were by the teens a couple of high end manufacturers making branded Swiss trench watches for dissemination in Europe as well as the U.S.  The two most well know of this bunch included Omega and Rolex.  Joseph Brant was one of the primary owners of the Omega watch company, which may even have started as Patria.  The company came into its own when it developed a particularly well-regarded pocket watch movement that they called an "omega" around the turn of the century.  Overtime, I suspect, Omega became the brand having as its guts the omega movement, and eventually Omega, the company, was spun off from the Patria and the Brandt brother's other watch interests.  The other watch interests did not use the omega movements in their watches but rather sourced them from other ebauche manufacturers.

So,  Patria was apparently owned by the Brandt's as were several other brand names sold in the U.S. but they are not Omegas.  Omegas have an omega movement.  In fact, this Patria watch is very similar to many of the unbranded watches in my collection having a movement sourced from one of the major Swiss manufacturers of movements.  It is a quality watch with a quality 15 jewel movement, but it does not have the cache of an Omega or Rolex.  Explained another way, calling a Patria a Omega is akin to calling a Chevy a Cadillac, or perhaps more appropriately, calling a Mini Cooper a BMW.

Back to the watch at hand, I added a very high quality strap from http://www.vintagewatchstraps.com.  It was a bit more expensive than some listed on ebay, but comparing this strap with an ebay strap is a disservice.  This is a nice strap.  In addition, owner's web site is an incredible information resource for all things trench watches.  The site is definitely worth spending a lot of time at, although keep in mind that it is definitely  Europe-centric, which isn't a bad thing but can explain why it does not have much information on certain brands, such as Patria.  As best I can tell, there weren't many Patrias sold in the UK. 

The crystal has been replaced with a glass mineral crystal and in keeping with the time, a period Duo-style shrapnel guard has been added (Expect a post discussing shrapnel guards at some point in the future), which I polished to match the case. Finally, I took the watch over to my local watchmaker who performed a COA on the movement.  The watch keeps time to within a couple of minutes a day, which is not great by modern standards, but is still pretty amazing when you consider this things is over 100 years old.  To start the watch after it has been sitting and has wound down, it is often necessary to give it a little shake after winding to get the balance moving again and doing its thing.  After this, however, it runs pretty reliably.

There is one flaw worth noting: the minute hand is bent.  Worse yet, one of the twin strips of metal that attach the cathedral hand to the mounting plate is broken.  Someday I will probably replace it but it seems to be working fine as is right now.

Enjoy the photos and please not some of the reflections on the highly polished case may appear as defects or damage but are not.