BOOK REVIEW: NEPTUNE'S FORTUNE

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V29 2026 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 29, Number 4, 2026, Article 2

A review in the Wall Street Journal examines Neptune's ForSan Josétune, a book about the search for the legendary shipwreck . Here's an excerpt - see the complete article online. -Editor

Precise amounts of the precious metals brought on board the San José for what turned out to be its final voyage are impossible to ascertain. But as Julian Sancton tells us in his splendid "Neptune's Fortune: The Billion-Dollar Shipwreck and the Ghosts of the Spanish Empire," it is estimated that there was "as much as eight tons' worth of gold on board, more than had ever sailed in a single Spanish ship," and "more than a million silver coins," in addition to precious-metal contraband and—another estimate—600 or so people.

The ship would, over time, attain legendary status and prompt the widespread belief, on at least three continents, that it was, as Mr. Sancton writes, "the most valuable shipwreck in history." But where exactly did the San José sink?

For hundreds of years, interested parties guessed wrong. Then came Roger Dooley. Born in New Jersey in 1944 to a Cuban mother and an American father, Mr. Dooley was 3 when his parents separated. After several years of moving about, he was living in Cuba with his mother and brother when, in 1959, Fidel Castro took control of the island nation. Beguiled by Castro's soldiers, 15-year-old Roger joined the army. But he was also entranced by diving (courtesy of the American television show "Sea Hunt") and would become, Mr. Sancton tells us, a naturally skilled diver. The Caribbean was filled with centuries-old shipwrecks, and Mr. Dooley became enthralled by marine archaeology.

His life as a working archaeologist was either a tribute to his idealism (if you believe Mr. Dooley) or pervaded with hypocrisy and duplicity (if you believe his enemies). He became deft at cultivating businessmen, politicians (including Juan Manuel Santos, the former president of Colombia) and professional treasure hunters. Mr. Dooley defends these relationships as necessary in his pursuit of his scientific goals. One wealthy American entrepreneur, whom Mr. Dooley introduced to top Cuban cabinet officials for a book project on sailing Cuba's shores, helped remove Mr. Dooley from the U.S. sanctions list.

Mr. Dooley is also a discerning and indefatigable researcher. In 1984, while at the General Archive of the Indies in Seville, Spain, he came upon several letters written in 1708 that contained, Mr. Sancton tells us, "critical clues" to the San José's whereabouts. From that moment on, the sunken warship became Mr. Dooley's lodestar, even as he "became ever more cynical" about the Cuban revolution. But it was in 1999, while examining 400 centuries-old Spanish maps in the Library of Congress in Washington, that Mr. Dooley discovered a 1729 map he felt sure would help lead him to the San José.

Mr. Sancton, an editor for the Hollywood Reporter and the author of "Madhouse at the End of the Earth" (2021), is an expert guide through 18th-century European geopolitics, modern Latin American geopolitics, Mr. Dooley's decadeslong pursuit of the San José, and the state-of-the-art technology that makes modern marine archaeology possible.