{"product_id":"neptunes-fortune-the-billion-dollar-shipwreck-and-the-ghosts-of-the-spanish-empire-9798217169030","title":"Neptune's Fortune: The Billion-Dollar Shipwreck and the Ghosts of the Spanish Empire","description":"\u003cb\u003eThe 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 \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eMadhouse at the End of the Earth\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eRoger Dooley wasn't looking for the \u003ci\u003eSan Jose\u003c\/i\u003e--he was looking for the galleon \u003ci\u003eMercedes. \u003c\/i\u003eBut 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 \u003ci\u003eSan Jose\u003c\/i\u003e, 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 \u003ci\u003eSan Jose \u003c\/i\u003ehad disappeared into the ocean, its precise location unknown and its decaying hull shrouded in darkness beyond the reach of divers. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eDooley 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 \u003ci\u003eSan Jose\u003c\/i\u003e--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. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eNeptune's Fortune\u003c\/i\u003e 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Random House Large Print Publishing\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 01\/27\/2026\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9798217169030\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 615\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.30lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.25h x 6.13w x 1.19d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLarge Print\u003c\/b\u003e","brand":"Julian Sancton","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":52072360345781,"sku":"9798217169030","price":29.75,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0473\/0804\/6492\/files\/img_72d9690c-c063-48a6-a0dd-dbd1011cae9e.jpg?v=1764688684","url":"https:\/\/pastforward.org\/products\/neptunes-fortune-the-billion-dollar-shipwreck-and-the-ghosts-of-the-spanish-empire-9798217169030","provider":"Past Forward","version":"1.0","type":"link"}