The Tudor Submariner reference 7016 is the first of the “Snowflake” Submariners, made from around 1969 to 1975. It has a stainless steel Oyster case of about 40 mm with a rotating bezel, a screw-down crown and a water-resistance rating of 200 metres, and it runs an automatic ETA-based movement. The black dial carries the feature that gives the watch its name: square-tipped “Snowflake” hands and matching square hour markers. The 7016/0 is the black-dial version, and the blue-dial 7021 and later 9104 and 9411 references share the same Snowflake design.

The square markers and hands were designed for legibility underwater, and they set the 7016 apart from Tudor’s earlier divers with their Rolex-style hands. The model is closely tied to the French Marine Nationale, which bought Tudor Submariners from the late 1960s; sources disagree on which references were issued and when, so the 7016’s exact role in French service is best treated as unsettled.

Collectors rate the 7016 as one of the most approachable early Tudor divers, with a design more distinctive than the Rolex Submariner it sits beside, at a lower price. Condition, original hands and a clean, evenly aged dial drive values, and Tudor revived the Snowflake look in the modern Black Bay Fifty-Eight. The original 7016 is no longer produced.