Neptune's fortune : the billion-dollar shipwreck and the ghosts of the Spanish empire / Julian Sancton ; maps David Lindroth Inc.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The riveting true story of a legendary Spanish galleon that sunk off the coast of Colombia with over $1 billion in gold and silver--and one man's obsessive quest to find it--from the New York Times bestselling author of Madhouse at the End of the Earth

"Splendid . . . Sancton is an expert guide through eighteenth-century European geopolitics [and] modern marine archaeology."-- The Wall Street Journal

Roger Dooley wasn't looking for the San José . But an accidental discovery in the dusty stacks of a Spanish archive led him to the story of a lifetime, the tale of a great eighteenth-century treasure ship loaded with riches from the New World and destined for Spain. But that ship, the galleon San José, met a darker fate. It was drawn into a pitched battle with British ships of war off the coast of Cartagena, and when the smoke cleared, the San José and its bounty had disappeared into the ocean, its coordinates lost to time.

Though a diver at heart, Dooley was an unlikely candidate to find the San José . He had little in the way of serious credentials, yet his tenacity and single-minded devotion to finding and excavating the ship powered him across four decades, even as he became a man in exile from the country of his birth. As Dooley jousted with famous treasure hunters and well-funded competitors, he slowly homed in on a patch of sea that might contain a three-hundred-year-old shipwreck--or nothing at all.

Neptune's Fortune is a thrilling adventure, taking readers from great naval battles on the high seas to the sun-soaked shores that nurtured history's most notorious treasure hunters, to the archives that held the secret keys to lost fortune on the ocean floor.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Sancton (Madhouse at the End of the Earth) returns with a gripping tale of lost treasure, colonial history, and moral ambiguity. It begins in 1984, when archaeologist Roger Dooley, then relatively unknown, stumbles upon a mysterious folio in the General Archive of the Indies in Spain. He was searching for traces of a shipwreck near Cuba--but what he found instead were long-lost clues pointing to the legendary San José, a Spanish galleon sunk off the coast of Cartagena, Colombia. Retracing Dooley's decades-long quest to locate the wreck, Sancton weaves together threads of colonial-era naval warfare, the murky politics of modern treasure hunting, and the ethical dilemmas surrounding cultural patrimony. Sancton's firsthand connection to Dooley, formed through a series of interviews while researching a 2022 Vanity Fair article, sets this book apart. Their relationship adds depth and intimacy to the narrative. Beyond the adventure, this book delves into thorny questions, including who owns history's sunken riches and whether they should be recovered at all. Sancton navigates the fraught tensions among archaeologists, governments, private salvors, and Indigenous groups with nuance and clarity. VERDICT This is more than a treasure-hunt tale; it's also a compelling examination of history, ethics, and obsession beneath the waves.--Jennifer Moore

Publishers Weekly Review

Historian Sancton (Madhouse at the End of the Earth) unravels a thrilling maritime saga that spans three centuries. In 1708, the Spanish galleon San José, laden with gold and silver, sank off the coast of Colombia during an English ambush. The wreck, a holy grail for treasure hunters, was finally located in 2015 due to the work of Roger Dooley, a shadowy "self-described maritime archaeologist" from Cuba (born in 1944, he emigrated there from Brooklyn as a teen). Following the discovery, however, Dooley was considered a con man, a smuggler, or even a "grave robber" by the rest of the maritime archaeological community--a nefarious reputation that persisted partly because Dooley never publicly explained how he found the wreck. Sancton tracks down the reclusive and somewhat eccentric Dooley and tries to set the story straight, untangling fact from fiction in his enthusiastic but vague retelling of events. It's no easy feat, since Dooley's lifelong quest, which began in the 1980s, took many stranger-than-fiction turns, among them his stumbling upon an 18th-century map with literal X's marking spots that turned out to be islands near the ambush site. In a technically complex, nail-biting conclusion, Sancton unveils the final discovery that allowed Dooley to home in on the ship's location, and then brings readers gasping to the surface for the "cultural, legal, and political quagmire" that followed. The result is a rollicking historical mystery and a beguiling human drama rolled into one. (Jan.)

Booklist Review

Treasure hunters had searched for the legendary 1708 Spanish shipwreck San José for generations but none with quite the vigor of historian Roger Dooley. To some, Dooley was a con man forced to make suspicious decisions due to his upbringing in Castro's Cuba. To others, Dooley was an expert in the field of marine archeology and a reliable source on the topic. The validity of Dooley's career was under great scrutiny after he stumbled upon clues to the potential location of this "Holy Grail" of shipwrecks, which was deemed by the Colombian government to be the biggest treasure in human history. Journalist and historian Sancton (Madhouse at the End of the Earth, 2021) recorded Dooley's story for the first time, as told by Dooley himself. Over four years, more than two hundred hours of interviews between Sancton and Dooley culminated in this riveting, nonfiction tale of sunken treasure worth unimaginable sums that reads like fiction. Even as Dooley's unique experiences draw his character into question, Sancton showcases the grit Dooley needed to achieve his life's dream.

Kirkus Book Review

Fireworks and treasure off the Spanish Main. Journalist and historian Sancton, author ofMadhouse at the End of the Earth, emphasizes the story of Roger Dooley, a self-described underwater archeologist who found a great sunken treasure ship. Sancton sets the scene in 1708 in the Caribbean, where a Spanish treasure fleet met a hostile British squadron. In the battle that followed, the galleonSan José sank somewhere in waters off Colombia. Early chapters describe undersea treasure hunting, a wild-west get-rich-quick occupation dominated by larger-than-life characters who chew through fortunes from naïve investors and rarely hit the jackpot. The treasure hunters employ violent methods, including dynamite that destroys historical artifacts and gives them a terrible reputation among archeologists. Born in 1944 New Jersey to a Cuban mother who returned to the island with her son, Dooley quickly adapted to his new country. Fascinated by diving and the newly invented Aqua-Lung and mostly self-educated, he turned himself into a skilled underwater archeologist. He was intrigued by theSan José, thought to contain unimaginable wealth. Commercial treasure hunters had found a wreck that they claimed was theSan José but produced no convincing evidence. Immersed in Spanish archives, Dooley discovered documents and maps that revealed the treasure fleet's route more accurately. Organizing his own investors, he contracted with Colombia's government and in 2015 found a wreck 2,000 feet deep and extracted artifacts that proved it was theSan José. A national celebration followed discovery of this icon of Colombian history, during which Dooley's name was not mentioned. It is likewise rarely mentioned in the avalanche of lawsuits that continue to clog the courts from Spain (the ship's original owner), Peru (whose mines produced the treasure), Indigenous groups (whose enslaved people extracted it), and former treasure hunters (whose contracts are supposedly still in force). Now in his 80s, Dooley remains a peripheral figure in stalled efforts to raise or simply celebrate this precious relic. A rousing historical treasure hunt. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.