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Neptune's Fortune

The Billion-Dollar Shipwreck and the Ghosts of the Spanish Empire

Author Julian Sancton
Large Print (Large Print - Tradepaper)
$35.00 US
| $48.00 CAN
Diversified | Random House Large Print
On sale Jan 27, 2026 | 576 Pages | 9798217169030
Grades 9-12 + AP/IB
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The riveting true story of a legendary Spanish galleon that sunk off the coast of Colombia with over 1 billion dollars 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

Roger Dooley wasn’t looking for the San Jose—he was looking for the galleon Mercedes. But an accidental discovery in the dusty stacks of a Spanish archive in the 1980s led him to the story of a lifetime—the journey of a ship that had gathered a mountain of plundered riches from the New World for a long-awaited delivery to the King of Spain. But that ship, the San Jose, never reached Spanish shores. Nearly three centuries earlier, somewhere miles off Cartegena, the Spanish armada was drawn into a pitched battle with British ships of war. When the smoke cleared, the San Jose had disappeared into the ocean, its precise location unknown and its decaying hull shrouded in darkness beyond the reach of divers.

Dooley was at once an unlikely candidate to find it, but also a singular figure. Half Cuban by birth, his life stretched from the ballfields of Brooklyn to the shores of Castro’s Havana at the dawn of revolution, where he would help birth a fledgling nation’s diving program and make films with the likes of Jacques Cousteau before finding himself placed on an international watch list and barred from the United States. A diver at heart, Dooley had little in the way of serious credentials, yet his tenacity and single-minded devotion to the science of ocean archeology—and to finding the San Jose—led him to breakthroughs thought impossible, as he jousted with famous treasure hunters and well-funded competitors and ultimately homed in on a patch of sea that might contain a three hundred year old shipwreck—or nothing at all. 

Neptune's Fortune plunges into a rarified world through the eyes of an idiosyncratic protagonist, one whose work would spark the hopes of presidents and make real the dreams of a nation. This tale of temerity and treasure is a one-of-a-kind story of a lost fortune and a decades-long quest to shine light on the bounty of gold and silver at the bottom of the sea.
“Of all the prizes slumbering upon the world’s seabeds, no shipwreck has stirred more mystery, intrigue, or controversy than the galleon San Jose. In these briskly paced pages, Julian Sancton takes us from moldering Spanish archives to the murk of the Caribbean to tell the thrilling story of how one quixotic, eccentric, and thoroughly obsessed sleuth stubbornly defied the odds to locate this most legendary of underwater bounties. Neptune’s Fortune is about treasure and the subculture of treasure seekers, but more importantly, it reminds us of the deeper and more satisfying riches that come embedded within a splendid historical tale that’s been researched meticulously and told exceptionally well.”—Hampton Sides, New York Times bestselling author of The Wide Wide Sea

“Roaring with excitement, Neptune’s Fortune is a deeply reported adventure, a study in obsession, and a thoroughly engrossing read. Sancton writes in the fine tradition of great narrative nonfiction that transports the reader into private worlds and into marvelous larger-than-life characters.”—Susan Orlean, bestselling author of The Orchid Thief and The Library Book

“Sancton is a masterful storyteller, and he has struck gold—pun intended—with Neptune’s Fortune. Through extraordinary research across three continents and with a journalist’s eye for the telling detail, he has penned a rollicking tale of buccaneers, shady treasure hunters and sea battles both past and present. Readers are in for a rare treat.”—Scott Anderson, New York Times bestselling author of Lawrence in Arabia

“Neptune’s Fortune is a wonderful book, full of heroism, greed, piracy, sunken treasure, and adventure on the high seas. A wild, incredible story from beginning to end, with a central character straight out of Hemingway, it’s even more remarkable because it’s true.”—Eric Schlosser, New York Times bestselling author of Chew On This and Fast Food Nation

“For more than three centuries, the Spanish galleon San José remained a mystery, lost in battle and vanished in the pitiless deep ocean. Whoever located this shipwreck and its legendary treasure—among the many searching for it—would find their name etched in history. How fortunate for us that one man’s obsession with the San José led to its discovery, and that master storyteller Julian Sancton has chronicled this triumph. Neptune’s Fortune is a real-life drama, a maritime riddle, a swashbuckling adventure, and, above all, a riveting tale.”—Susan Casey, New York Times bestselling author of The Underworld
© Jess Levine
Julian Sancton is the New York Times bestselling author of Madhouse at the End of the Earth and a senior features editor at The Hollywood Reporter. His work has appeared in Vanity Fair, National Geographic, Esquire, The New Yorker, and GQ, among other publications. He has reported from every continent, including Antarctica, and lives in Larchmont, New York. View titles by Julian Sancton

About

The riveting true story of a legendary Spanish galleon that sunk off the coast of Colombia with over 1 billion dollars 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

Roger Dooley wasn’t looking for the San Jose—he was looking for the galleon Mercedes. But an accidental discovery in the dusty stacks of a Spanish archive in the 1980s led him to the story of a lifetime—the journey of a ship that had gathered a mountain of plundered riches from the New World for a long-awaited delivery to the King of Spain. But that ship, the San Jose, never reached Spanish shores. Nearly three centuries earlier, somewhere miles off Cartegena, the Spanish armada was drawn into a pitched battle with British ships of war. When the smoke cleared, the San Jose had disappeared into the ocean, its precise location unknown and its decaying hull shrouded in darkness beyond the reach of divers.

Dooley was at once an unlikely candidate to find it, but also a singular figure. Half Cuban by birth, his life stretched from the ballfields of Brooklyn to the shores of Castro’s Havana at the dawn of revolution, where he would help birth a fledgling nation’s diving program and make films with the likes of Jacques Cousteau before finding himself placed on an international watch list and barred from the United States. A diver at heart, Dooley had little in the way of serious credentials, yet his tenacity and single-minded devotion to the science of ocean archeology—and to finding the San Jose—led him to breakthroughs thought impossible, as he jousted with famous treasure hunters and well-funded competitors and ultimately homed in on a patch of sea that might contain a three hundred year old shipwreck—or nothing at all. 

Neptune's Fortune plunges into a rarified world through the eyes of an idiosyncratic protagonist, one whose work would spark the hopes of presidents and make real the dreams of a nation. This tale of temerity and treasure is a one-of-a-kind story of a lost fortune and a decades-long quest to shine light on the bounty of gold and silver at the bottom of the sea.

Reviews

“Of all the prizes slumbering upon the world’s seabeds, no shipwreck has stirred more mystery, intrigue, or controversy than the galleon San Jose. In these briskly paced pages, Julian Sancton takes us from moldering Spanish archives to the murk of the Caribbean to tell the thrilling story of how one quixotic, eccentric, and thoroughly obsessed sleuth stubbornly defied the odds to locate this most legendary of underwater bounties. Neptune’s Fortune is about treasure and the subculture of treasure seekers, but more importantly, it reminds us of the deeper and more satisfying riches that come embedded within a splendid historical tale that’s been researched meticulously and told exceptionally well.”—Hampton Sides, New York Times bestselling author of The Wide Wide Sea

“Roaring with excitement, Neptune’s Fortune is a deeply reported adventure, a study in obsession, and a thoroughly engrossing read. Sancton writes in the fine tradition of great narrative nonfiction that transports the reader into private worlds and into marvelous larger-than-life characters.”—Susan Orlean, bestselling author of The Orchid Thief and The Library Book

“Sancton is a masterful storyteller, and he has struck gold—pun intended—with Neptune’s Fortune. Through extraordinary research across three continents and with a journalist’s eye for the telling detail, he has penned a rollicking tale of buccaneers, shady treasure hunters and sea battles both past and present. Readers are in for a rare treat.”—Scott Anderson, New York Times bestselling author of Lawrence in Arabia

“Neptune’s Fortune is a wonderful book, full of heroism, greed, piracy, sunken treasure, and adventure on the high seas. A wild, incredible story from beginning to end, with a central character straight out of Hemingway, it’s even more remarkable because it’s true.”—Eric Schlosser, New York Times bestselling author of Chew On This and Fast Food Nation

“For more than three centuries, the Spanish galleon San José remained a mystery, lost in battle and vanished in the pitiless deep ocean. Whoever located this shipwreck and its legendary treasure—among the many searching for it—would find their name etched in history. How fortunate for us that one man’s obsession with the San José led to its discovery, and that master storyteller Julian Sancton has chronicled this triumph. Neptune’s Fortune is a real-life drama, a maritime riddle, a swashbuckling adventure, and, above all, a riveting tale.”—Susan Casey, New York Times bestselling author of The Underworld

Author

© Jess Levine
Julian Sancton is the New York Times bestselling author of Madhouse at the End of the Earth and a senior features editor at The Hollywood Reporter. His work has appeared in Vanity Fair, National Geographic, Esquire, The New Yorker, and GQ, among other publications. He has reported from every continent, including Antarctica, and lives in Larchmont, New York. View titles by Julian Sancton

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