The 16800 is the Submariner that stopped being vintage and started being modern, and it managed both at once. Sapphire crystal for the first time. Water resistance doubled to 300 m, printed right there on the dial. A unidirectional bezel and a quickset date. And on the early ones, a matte black dial with painted tritium markers that now glow the colour of old paper.
That combination is why people buy them and, more to the point, why people actually wear them. A 16800 isn't a safe-queen. It's the vintage Submariner you can swim in without a conversation with yourself first — which makes it one of the best rubber strap candidates in the whole Rolex catalogue.
Strap size and fit for the Submariner 16800
The 16800 is a 40mm case with a 20mm lug width.
This is the number people get wrong, because the Submariner didn't keep it. Every five-digit and earlier Sub — the 5512, 5513, 1680, 16800 and 16610 — runs 20mm. The six-digit ceramic generation, the 116610 and 126610, moved to 21mm and a wider case. A 21mm strap will not fit your 16800, and it won't look "close enough" either.
So when you order from Helvetus, select Submariner 40mm. Not 41mm. That single dropdown is the whole game:
→ All rubber straps for the Rolex Submariner
One honest recommendation on buckles. Go with the pin buckle version. The deployant straps are designed around the modern Rolex deployant clasp, and your 16800 came on the period Oyster bracelet with a Fliplock clasp — a different animal entirely. The pin buckle version includes its own steel buckle, fits properly, and means you're not sending anything back. If you'd rather double-check against your specific clasp before ordering, support will tell you straight.
Why the 16800 matters
Rolex built it from 1979 to the end of the 1980s, slotting it between the acrylic-crystal 1680 and the short-lived 168000 that followed.
It's called a transitional reference for good reason. The engineering jumped forward — sapphire, 300 m, unidirectional bezel, the calibre 3035 with its faster beat rate and quickset date — while the look stayed firmly in the old world. Aluminium bezel insert. Tritium lume. Case proportions that hadn't been inflated yet.
The dial is where it splits in two. Early production used matte black dials with painted tritium plots that sit flat on the surface. Later production moved to glossy dials with applied markers. Both are correct, both are 16800s, and the matte ones carry the premium. Either way, that tritium has spent forty years turning cream, and it's the single most irreplaceable thing on the watch.
Original bracelet: the 93150 Oyster, with 593 or later 501B end links and a Fliplock clasp with a diver's extension.
Why owners of this reference put it on rubber
The 93150 has hollow mid-links, and hollow links stretch. That's not a defect, it's just how Oyster bracelets were built from the mid-seventies onward. But stretch accumulates, it never reverses, and it's one of the first things a buyer or dealer checks. Every day you wear the watch hard on the bracelet is a day of wear you can't undo.
Tritium doesn't come back either. Sweat, salt water, sunscreen and forty-year-old gaskets aren't a great combination. Rubber is the strap you can rinse under a tap and forget about — and it's the reason a 16800 can go back to doing the job it was designed for.
And the lugs are drilled through. This is the 16800's quiet advantage over every modern Submariner. You push the spring bars out from the outside with a pin, the bracelet comes off in under a minute, and you never bring a tool anywhere near the inner lug faces. No slipped screwdriver, no scratch on a case that's worth more unpolished. Swapping straps on this reference is genuinely easier than on a watch made last year.
The bracelet stays in the box, period-correct and unstretched, and the watch gets worn.
Four strap colours that suit the 16800
1. Black — the diver's uniform
Black rubber on a black-dialled Submariner isn't a creative choice, it's the right one. It puts the watch back into its original context, keeps the eye on the dial and the bezel, and lets whatever patina you have do the talking without anything competing.
It's also the one to buy first if the point of the strap is to actually use the watch — beach, boat, pool, gym. This is that strap.
→ Black rubber strap for the Rolex Submariner
2. Beige — the one that matches the lume
Here's the pick most 16800 owners haven't considered. Forty years of tritium has turned your markers and hands a warm cream, and beige rubber picks that up exactly. Suddenly the aging on the dial reads as a design decision rather than an accident of chemistry.
It's the most "vintage-correct" thing you can put on this watch without buying a period bracelet, and it looks far better in person than it sounds on a screen. If your lume has gone properly creamy or pumpkin-toned, this is the one.
→ Beige rubber strap for the Rolex Submariner
3. Blue — for a bezel that's faded
Plenty of 1980s aluminium inserts have drifted away from pure black over the decades, going grey, slightly plum, or a touch blue-black in daylight. If yours has, a blue strap stops fighting it and starts working with it. The insert reads as intentional, and the whole watch looks lighter and more summer than a black strap allows.
Check yours outside in real light before you decide. A truly black insert doesn't need this. A faded one is transformed by it.
→ Blue rubber strap for the Rolex Submariner
4. White — maximum contrast
The opposite approach, and it works for a specific reason on this reference: a white strap throws the matte black dial and the cream markers into hard relief. Everything printed on that dial, including the "1000 ft = 300 m" line the 16800 introduced, gets sharper.
It's a warm-weather strap and it's not subtle, but on a forty-year-old dive watch it looks confident rather than fussy.
→ White rubber strap for the Rolex Submariner
More colours, including the LuxLine® options with a coloured line running through the strap, are in the Submariner collection — just remember to select Submariner 40mm.
Same case, same fit
If you own one of these instead, nothing changes:
- 16803 — the two-tone steel and gold version of the same watch. 40mm, 20mm.
- 16808 — the full yellow gold version. Same case, same 20mm width.
- 168000 — the brief "Triple Zero" that followed. Also 40mm and 20mm.
- 1680 — the acrylic-crystal predecessor, also 20mm.
- 116610 / 126610 — the modern ceramic Subs. These are 21mm, so don't order from this guide.
Quick answers
What lug width is the Rolex Submariner 16800? 20mm. The case is 40mm and the gap between the lugs is 20mm.
What do I select when ordering? Submariner 40mm. Not 41mm — that's the modern ceramic generation and it takes 21mm.
Pin buckle or deployant? Pin buckle. The deployant version is built around the modern Rolex deployant clasp, not the vintage Fliplock clasp your 16800 came with.
Is changing the strap risky on a vintage Submariner? Less than on a modern one. The 16800 has drilled lug holes, so the spring bars come out from the outside without a tool ever touching the inside of the lugs.
Before you order
On a watch this old, the thing you're protecting is originality — the bracelet, the lugs, the dial. A strap that fits properly does all three favours at once.
Helvetus straps for the Submariner are cut for the 40mm case, come with a lifetime warranty on rubber, ship free worldwide with no import costs, and are worn by 50,000+ customers. Put the 93150 in the box, put the 16800 back in the water.
