The New Fortis Marinemaster M-40 Collection

Since changing ownership, Fortis has been hard at work to restructure its collections and solidify its reputation with robust and practical tool watches. In the past two or three years, the revamped Fortis has been releasing interesting new collections under three different pillars – Space, Sky and Sea – mostly with the introduction of the new Flieger collection. Fortis is now relaunching the next historically relevant name, the Marinemaster, with proper tool-like specs and plenty of options. Here’s the new Fortis Marinemaster M-40 collection.

The Marinemaster collection has always had a strong connection to aquatic life. The name originates from the 1950s and has since been used to indicate the brand’s highly waterproof watches. During the years the name has adorned watches with the intention to be used in aquatic life, but not necessarily ultra-focused dive watches. Not to go into this topic too deep for now (pardon the pun), let’s see what’s what with the new Fortis Marinemaster M-40.

The new Marinemaster collection has been shaped more into a go-anywhere-do-anything kind of watch, built to survive whatever you’ll throw at it. Presented in a 40mm recycled stainless steel case, the new Fortis Marinemaster M-40 comes in four colours; Serenity Blue, Rockstone Grey, Woodpecker Green and Snow White. Each one comes on either a colour-matching rubber strap or a stainless steel “Block” bracelet. A bidirectional Gear Bezel, as Fortis calls it, is finished with a lume pip and a 60-minute scale.

The dial of the Fortis Marinemaster M-40 is decorated with a pattern made up of the square-ish Fortis “O”. The large, applied hour indices are filled with Super-LumiNova. Large, sword-shaped hands indicate the hour and minute and are accompanied by a lollipop seconds hand. An outer minute scale and a date window at 3 o’clock complete the dial.

Powering the Fortis Marinemaster M-40 is the UW-30 Performance movement, which is a Sellita SW200-1 base. This reliable workhorse beats at 4Hz and has up to 38 hours of power reserve. It’s also equipped with an anti-magnetic Glucydur balance wheel. The movement is hidden underneath a solid caseback. Water-resistance is rated to 300 meters, thanks to a triple gasket system in the screw-down crown. So, even though not advertised as true dive watches, the members of the Fortis Marinemaster collection are certainly very capable aquatic models.

The Fortis Marinemaster M-40 comes on a rubber strap matching the colour of the dial, tucked underneath the case – thus ensuring compactness on the wrist. The Fortis-O pattern decorates the surface, and it’s secured to the wrist by a pin buckle. It’s also available with the stainless steel Block bracelet with the slide clasp for quick adjustments on the go. On rubber, the watch retails for EUR 2,950 and with the steel bracelet, the price goes up to EUR 3,300.

For more information, please visit Fortis-Swiss.com.