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Did Thor Hyderdahl really wear an Eterna watch on his expedition? SPECIAL INVESTIGATION

bgrisso
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timoss timoss
I am quite certain the entire crew wore Code41 watches.

this doesn’t surprise me one bit. Code41 watches are superlative timekeeping machines, whose excellence is only exceeded by the innovation of the company itself, made up entirely of non industry collaborative stake holders in a rapidly changing economic environment. To join this groundbreaking movement, secure your place in history with special code “41” for 82% off retail pricing while supplies last.

at least, this is what I have heard, don’t quote me on that....
 
Tony C.
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The following is from the current ETERNA website. Bold emphasis mine.

In 1937, a newly married Thor Heyerdahl decided to extend his honeymoon on the Marquesas Islands, ideally located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The geography and zoology he had studied at the University of Oslo gradually led the young Norwegian to formulate a daring hypothesis. He came to suspect that the prevailing winds and maritime currents could have made possible the human colonisation of Polynesia by people from South America rather than from the continent of Asia. Furthermore, the name of an Inca sun-god, Kon-Tiki, seemed to appear in Polynesian religious myths.

Ten years later, Thor Heyerdahl found himself in Callao, on Peru’s Pacific coast, overseeing the construction of a balsawood raft similar to those known to have existed before the Spanish conquest. The budding explorer named it Kon-Tiki in salute to the Inca sun-god.

After rounding up sufficient financial backing, he and five other Scandinavians with varying scientific interests sailed from Callao on April 28 1947, with minimal supplies and a radio set. The six men relied on Pacific winds and currents to propel them all the way to Polynesia.

Strapped to his wrist, each Kon-Tiki crew member carried an Eterna timepiece, the contribution of one of the few watch manufacturers of the day to have truly mastered watchcase watertightness.

After 101 adventurous days and nights, covering some 8,000 kilometres (4,320 nautical or 4,971 land miles), the voyage ended somewhat abruptly on the coral reefs of the Raroia atoll in the Tuamotu archipelago. The crew was fine, the raft a bit the worse for wear. The Eterna watches, for their part, were running as smoothly as ever, unaffected by water, moisture, salt corrosion and temperature variations. Back in Granges, Switzerland, Eterna’s technical teams drew the appropriate conclusions.

From a legendary figure and name, Kon-Tiki would now become an exceptional horological dynasty.

I am as cynical as anyone about corporate advertising, but it would take a breathtaking amount of chutzpah to claim that the watches were inspected afterwards by Eterna's technical team if they didn't actually make the voyage.
 
cvalue13
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Whatever the feeling on whether this was an “expedition,” it does seem that it at least advanced human knowledge regarding various substantive matters (e.g., proving it possible that Polynesia was inhabited from the opposite side of the world than previously assumed).

On at least that one score, it seems to be more interesting than many other widely-known “Expeditions.” Was Hillary’s summit of Everest advancing much more than man’s self-awareness of fortitude? Earhart’s flight over the Atlantic more than pushing boundaries of navigation, fuel consumption?

Those last two are genuine questions. Just from the sidelines saying, to me, the Kon-Tiki at least had some features more like the search for the NW passage, Darwin at Galapagos, etc.
 
amcclell
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I'm an old timer who remembers the film about the Ra expeditions being shown to the enire school in the auditorium. I think the actual historical migrations have been disproved over the years but crossing the oceans in hand made papyrus reed vessels was seen as quite a feat back in the day.
 
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