Deck watch no. 7458 by Victor Kullberg

Catalogue description — Royal Museums Greenwich

Three-tier mahogany deck box with brass insert holding watch under a screwed brass bezel. The silver open-face case now has its back missing, the dome is glazed, and the pendant is stamped with the sponsors mark ‘F.T.’ (Frederick Thoms). The chronometer has a gilt winding crown and brass push-piece for hand setting at one o’clock and for engaging the keyless winding at eleven o’clock. The two-piece, centre seconds dial has a white enamel face, black roman numerals, Arabic five minute figures, and is signed across the centre: ‘VICTOR KULLBERG LONDON 7428’ , and with. ‘↑’ below centre. Above the centre is an up and down dial. Polished blued steel spade and poker hands with a fine pointer blued steel second hand with a counter poised tail and blued steel up and down pointer. It has a gilt-brass half-plate keyless fusee movement with three turned pillars fixed with polished and blued steel screws. The top of the half plate is engraved: ‘Victor Kullberg, 105 Liverpool Road. London / GRAND PRIX PARIS 1900 / ↑ / No.7458 / 4 DIPLOMAS OF HONOUR 10 GOLD MEDALS AWARDED’. The chronometer has an Earnshaw type spring detent escapement with free-sprung compensation balance and blued steel helical balance spring, with terminals. Jewelled to the centre wheel. The rough movement for the watch was first supplied to Kullberg’s by Preston’s of Prescot in May 1903. Finishing work continued slowly until February 1910 when the Admiralty ordered the watch and completion took place rapidly, it being delivered in March, costing £38. The watch was in Navy service through until 1945 and remained in the MoD workshops until loan to the NMM in 1972. Victor Kullberg (1824-90) was born in Visby on the Island of Gotland, Sweden. He was trained by the Swedish chronometer maker Victor Soderburg in Stockholm in 1840 and emigrated to London in 1851, having moved to his permanent address at 105 Liverpool Road, N1, by 1870. During his lifetime Kullberg gained many medals and awards for his chronometers and enjoyed a truly international reputation. As well as supplying many foreign governments, he regularly submitted chronometers for the Annual Trials at Greenwich Observatory, gaining first place in 1864 with a chronometer fitted with his newly invented ‘flat rim’ balance. His inventions included several designs of compensation balance and improvements to keyless winding for pocket watches. He also designed the automatic gas-governor for controlling the temperature of the chronometer testing ovens at the Observatory. More than 500 chronometers by Kullberg were supplied to the Royal Navy alone and he can be said to have been one of the 19th century’s finest chronometer makers. On Kullberg’s death in 1890 the firm was taken over by George and Peter Wennerstrom, themselves succeeded by Sanfrid Lundquist who had joined the firm in 1894 and who moved the firm to Cranford in Middlesex in 1938, trading under the name of Victor Kullberg until his death in 1947).