Chasing Neptune’s Fortune: A Story of Obsession and the Sea

In Newport, Rhode Island, a small independent bookstore is hosting a very big story. Charter Books, in collaboration with the Newport Historical Society, is welcoming New York Times bestselling author Julian Sancton for a talk on his latest book, Neptune’s Fortune. The event is set for Sunday, March 29th, from 5:00 to 6:00 PM at 8 Broadway, Newport, and is free to attend with an RSVP.

At the heart of Neptune’s Fortune is the legendary Spanish galleon San José, which sank off the coast of Colombia in the eighteenth century while carrying an immense cargo of gold and silver—valued today at over 1 billion dollars. The ship was pulled into a pitched battle with British warships off Cartagena, and when the cannons finally fell silent, both the vessel and its treasure had vanished into the deep, its exact resting place erased from human memory.

Sancton follows the unlikely figure of Roger Dooley, a diver who stumbled onto the story almost by accident while sifting through old documents in a Spanish archive. What began as a discovery in dusty stacks turned into a decades-long quest as Dooley devoted himself to finding the San José, despite lacking the usual credentials and facing off against better-funded competitors. His single-minded focus gradually narrowed the search to one patch of ocean that might hide a 300-year-old shipwreck—or absolutely nothing at all.

The narrative moves between great naval battles, sun-soaked shores that bred some of history’s most notorious treasure hunters, and quiet reading rooms where forgotten papers hold the keys to unimaginable fortune. It is as much about archives and patience as it is about waves and storms, showing how adventure often begins far from the sea, in small moments of curiosity and persistence.

Julian Sancton himself brings serious storytelling credentials to the tale: he is also the bestselling author of Madhouse at the End of the Earth and a senior features editor at The Hollywood Reporter. His journalism has taken him to every continent, including Antarctica, and his work has appeared in outlets such as Vanity Fair, National Geographic, Esquire, The New Yorker, and GQ.

For anyone drawn to long-shot quests, hidden histories, and the thin line between obsession and discovery, Neptune’s Fortune promises a journey worth taking. And for those in or near Newport, the chance to hear it told by the author himself—at a neighborhood bookshop on a Sunday evening—might be the most fitting beginning to that voyage.