Trophies You Didn’t Earn
A conversation with explorer David Concannon... on watches that work for a living, the bootleg Explorers Club Flag, and sitting alone with Apollo rocket engines!
Our industry typically markets ‘exploration’ the way car adverts sell empty mountain roads… a man in technical outerwear squints at a glacier, a diver hangs aimlessly in blue water, and then the word ‘heritage’ appears in the bubbles or whatever. But in the end, the watch is bought by someone whose most demanding expedition this year will be a connecting flight through Schipol.
I include myself in this meme by the way; most of us are buying the costume, and I’ve written enough about self-deception to know the costume works well because we don’t tend to admit it’s a costume. Which is why it is rather disorienting to meet someone for whom the marketing copy feels like his personal diary.
I met David Concannon the way you meet anyone these days, which is to say, in the Substack comment section 😂. We stayed in touch, and then I started following his photography (which is superb!). I then listened to some podcasts featuring him, and later his wife, and somewhere along the way a bigger picture about the man and his life came into focus (in escalating stages of disbelief, I might add).
First I learned he was a lawyer… no big deal. Then I learned he was the sort of lawyer who has lost only one trial, his first, in 1995. Then I learned he’d dived to the Titanic. Then, that he’d done it five times, and led the last expedition to visit the wreck with the Mir submersibles. I then learned that he led the expeditions that found and recovered the Apollo F-1 engines from the bottom of the Atlantic - I mean the actual engines that pushed men toward the Moon, on a project funded by Jeff Bezos. After that I discovered that he joined The Explorers Club in 1996 as one of the youngest members in the world, has held every office except President, and is currently its General Counsel (for the second time).
At some point in this sequence of learning about the man I took a break from thinking ‘wow, what an interesting guy’ and thought, ‘why the heck have I not interviewed him for SDC!?’
So I did.
What follows below is our exchange, lightly edited and grouped by theme. I’ve kept my interruptions to a minimum because, frankly, you will not want to hear from me on this occasion. But one warning before we start… this is not really an interview about watches per se, though watches do run all the way through the chat. I’d say this interview is mostly about what objects are for, and I’d argue David has better data on that question than almost anyone else I know in this hobby.
We will begin on the side of a mountain.
Estimated reading time: ~ 27 mins
Going through it
SDC: You came down from Kilimanjaro in 1989 half-wrecked and started planning the next trip almost straight away. Are you nuts? Has it ever frightened you, or is the fear part of the appeal?
DC: Actually, I was fully wrecked. I had a collapsed lung (again), pulmonary edema (on its way to pneumonia), cerebral edema (the most dangerous condition), retinal hemorrhages (which cleared soon enough) but, most importantly, a speech impediment, ataxia and significant memory loss. The doctors told me I had suffered the equivalent of a stroke and traumatic brain injury and, when I die and an autopsy is performed, my brain will show evidence of dead tissue and “mini-strokes” all over. This was a hell of a way to go into my 24th birthday.
The truth is, at that time, this was just another shitty card that I had been dealt in the game of life. It is hard to overstate the challenges I faced when growing up – no father, alcoholic mother, religious and economic intolerance, I started working at the age of 11, the most influential person in my life died when I was 16, no family or community to lean on, etc., etc. Despite this, I was the only person in my family to go to college, I paid for it myself, then I was in law school and, at the ripe old age of 23, I was faced with another significant challenge. Nobody was going to help me. The only way to get around the next challenge was to go through it. Fear was never part of the appeal. Resignation was part of my daily life. This was just another challenge I had to face.
Also, fear has never really been an issue for me. Fear is paralyzing. It keeps you from moving forward. I learned at an early age that fear does not serve me. The only things I am afraid of are something bad happening to the people I love, because I cannot control this. I am not afraid of the things that can happen to me. I believe I have the ability to just keep moving.
SDC: You worked the shop floor at Eastern Mountain Sports to pay for law school, kitting other people out for their adventures. Did you know then that you’d end up living the version most people were only buying gear to dream about?
DC: I was already doing it. I started venturing into the wilderness at the age of 11, when I attended summer camp in New Hampshire. I went there until I was 14, then I toured Europe in a double-decker bus (London to Istanbul and back) when I was 15. EMS was just a continuation of the path I was on, plus the opportunity to buy gear at half price!
SDC: You’ve said you’ve lost only one trial, your first, and never another since. Does the courtroom scratch the same itch as the expeditions, or are they two completely different parts of you?
DC: It used to, but it does not anymore. The truth is, I take no satisfaction from winning a trial. That is what I am paid to do. The same goes for leading a major expedition. There is something I talk about with my peers that I call “The realization at the foot of the bed.” It’s the realization that comes on the last morning of an expedition that you have led, when the five or ten or 100 people you have led are dispersing to the winds and you have accomplished something really significant – a first in human history – and now it’s over. You are about to go home to your family and loved ones, maybe to the crush of the media, and now you are about to be on the other side. It’s over. You have achieved what you set out to achieve. When you are the leader, that place at the foot of the bed on the last day of an expedition, is a very lonely place to be.
The only people who understand what it feels like to be there and experience this loneliness are the people who have been there before in the same position. I have talked about this with Victor Vescovo, Don Walsh, Mensun Bound, Stockton Rush and others. We have all felt it, and we have privately confided in each other that the feeling is real. And, the reality is, you cannot reveal this to anyone but a peer, because the world does not accept this feeling of loneliness and resignation as an acceptable part of the “hero’s journey.”
But, yes. The feeling I get when I walk out of the courtroom after the jury delivers its verdict is very, very similar.
I’d never heard anyone describe the comedown from achievement quite like that, and I suspect it applies in a small way to something most collectors know well. The chase ends, the box opens, and the feeling you’d budgeted for fails to show up. David’s version just obviously has higher stakes and fewer people who can relate, but it’s pretty analogous.
Stuff that works
David’s gear philosophy is five words long: ‘I like stuff that works.’ This raised an obvious question for me because the things people like us obsess over are, by any reasonable assessment, technically obsolete.
SDC: Your whole philosophy is ‘I like stuff that works.’ Where does a mechanical watch fit in that, given it’s arguably the least functional thing you own? What’s it doing for you that your dive computer can’t?
DC: Not failing. A mechanical watch never shows you a blank screen. It does not fail to connect with another electronic device. It does not require charging. It allows you to navigate off the sun, orient yourself in the darkness, and help guide you to your destination, IN ADDITION TO telling you the time. It allows you to be untethered from the nanny devices we frequently rely upon. Have you ever lost wifi, even for an hour? Has this made you absolutely fall to pieces? A mechanical watch will never do this to you. It will not leave you in a lurch. It will not put you into harm’s way. On the contrary, it just may lead you out of harm’s way. It has for me, many times.
SDC: When you’re at the ocean floor looking at the Titanic, or coming up from a deep dive, is the watch on your wrist a tool, a talisman, or just along for the ride? Be honest, does it earn its place down there?
DC: It’s always a tool. When I am underwater, the watch guides me. It keeps me safe, keeps me out of trouble, and helps me accomplish what I am there to do. It only becomes a talisman or a piece of jewelry at the awards dinners long after the expeditions are over.
SDC: The titanium Yacht-Master. We both love this thing, and SDC readers will remember Mr Rehaut’s review of the 226627 as well as my own review. You waited about a year for yours. What made that the watch worth the wait for someone who’s handled the extreme end of dive kit?
DC: It is EXTREMELY functional. It’s light, easy to read, glows like a mother*cker at night, and it does not scream “ROLEX!!!!” It is rapidly eclipsing my GMT-Master II as my most favorite watch1.
SDC: You’ve got a deep love of Rolex and Omega specifically. Why those two? What did each of them get right that pulled you in and kept you?
DC: History, history, history. I love Rolex, but I don’t love Omega. I appreciate the simplicity and history of the VINTAGE Speedmaster. Otherwise, the Omega brand does nothing for me. As for Rolex, I love the history and universal functionality. I have worn a Rolex for more than 30 years. I cannot get used to looking at another watch on my wrist, unless it’s a vintage Speedmaster, and then only for about a day.
I’ll confess I’d written my question on the assumption David loved both brands, and he corrected me point blank. This happened a few times in our exchange, and it tells you something important... the brand loyalty on display here was built by 30 years of the product doing its job in places where the product failing might have been a case of life and death - it has nothing to do with adverts or status symbols.
Fathers and sons
SDC: Of all the watches with stories attached, which one carries the most for you, and what happened while you were wearing it?
DC: My original Rolex Submariner, for the reasons I stated in my Substack piece “A boy and his father’s watch.” This was my first “real watch,” purchased with an early paycheck from my first “real job.” I noted the date when I learned our first child would be a boy, I timed my wife’s contractions when she was giving birth to our son and daughter, I wore it on numerous dives, including my first dives to the Titanic (aka, when I first “made it” as an explorer), and I passed it on to my son when he was old enough to appreciate it.
SDC: You’ve written about linking fathers’ watches to Arctic expeditions and the way both connect generations. Can you tell us the watch at the heart of that, and why a watch, rather than anything else, became the carrier for that connection?
DC: Rolex Explorer II. This is the quintessential polar exploration watch. The hardest thing to get used to in the polar regions is the light never changing throughout the day. In the Arctic, the sun never really goes up or down. It just goes around the sky at the same height above the horizon. That height dips incrementally lower every day as the season progresses. Not only can you not tell the time of day, but you cannot tell the direction you are headed without referring to the sun’s position in comparison to the watch hands. Hours turn into days as your circadian rhythm gets thrown away. It becomes dangerously disorienting.
The watch represents the passage of time, both daily and generationally. The photo [see below] shows Alexander Hillary’s Explorer II, my Explorer II and Sir Edmund Hillary’s Explorer II on the chart showing the way to the North Pole.