Neptune’s Fortune

The riveting true story of a legendary Spanishgalleon that sunk with over $1 billion in gold andsilver-and one man's obsessive quest to find it-from the Sunday Times bestselling author ofMadhouse at the End of the EarthRoger Dooley wasn't looking for the San Jose. But an accidental discovery inthe dusty stacks of a Spanish archive in the 1980s led him to the story of alifetime-the journey of a ship that had gathered a mountain of riches from theNew World for a long-awaited delivery to the King of Spain nearly three centuriesearlier. But that ship, the galleon San Jose, never reached its destination.Instead, the Spanish treasure fleet was drawn into a pitched battle with Britishships of war off the coast of Cartagena. When the smoke cleared, the San Josehad disappeared into the ocean.Though a diver at heart, Dooley was an unlikely candidate to find the San Jose.Half Cuban by birth, he lived a life that stretched from the ballfields of Brooklynto the shores of Castro's Havana at the dawn of revolution, where he would helpbirth a fledgling nation's diving program and make films with Jacques Cousteau,before finding himself placed on an international watch list and barred from theUnited States. Dooley had little in the way of serious credentials, yet histenacity and single-minded devotion to finding the San Jose led him tobreakthroughs once thought impossible. As he jousted with famous treasurehunters and well-funded competitors, Dooley ultimately homed in on a patch ofsea 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 anidiosyncratic protagonist, one whose work would spark the hopes of presidentsand make real the dreams of a nation. This tale of temerity and treasure is aone-of-a-kind story of a lost fortune and the decades-long quest to shine a lighton the bounty at the bottom of the sea.