Includes bibliographical references and index.

"Roger Dooley wasn't looking for the San Jos�e. But an accidental discovery in the dusty stacks of a Spanish archive led him to the story of a lifetime: the tale of a great eighteenth-century treasure ship loaded with riches from the New World and destined for Spain. But that ship, the galleon San Jos�e, met a darker fate. It was drawn into a pitched battle with British ships of war off the coast of Cartagena, and when the smoke cleared, the San Jos�e and its bounty had disappeared into the ocean, its coordinates lost to time. Though a diver at heart, Dooley was an unlikely candidate to find the [ship]. He had little in the way of serious credentials, yet his tenacity and single-minded devotion to finding and excavating the ship powered him across four decades, even as he became a man in exile from the country of his birth. As Dooley jousted with famous treasure hunters and well-funded competitors, he slowly homed in on a patch of sea that might contain a three-hundred-year-old shipwreck--or nothing at all"-- Provided by publisher.