Julian Sancton is endlessly curious. The author brings an outsider’s perspective to niche obsessives and turns out epic tales. His first book, the New York Times bestseller Madhouse at the End of the Earth, is a novelesque account of a failed Antarctic expedition (eating penguin meat is involved). His new book, Neptune’s Fortune: The Billion-Dollar Shipwreck and the Ghosts of the Spanish Empire, tells the story of an 18th-century shipwreck and the man singularly obsessed with finding it. Yet when he started both these books he knew nothing.
“I didn’t know anything about polar expeditions or shipwrecks,” Sancton says. “I had to learn these things for myself. And I hope I’m able to convey that enthusiasm and curiosity on the page. Things that seem magical to me, for a specialist might seem pedestrian or so obvious as to not merit mentioning.”
Neptune’s Fortune, out this month, chronicles the history of the Spanish galleon San José, which sank off the coast of Cartagena, Colombia, in 1708. Loaded with gold, silver, and emeralds worth billions of dollars today, the San José was long the holy grail for archaeologists, money hungry treasure hunters, and shipwreck enthusiasts. Sancton, who by day is an editor at The Hollywood Reporter, tracked down Roger Dooley, the enigmatic Cuban archaeologist who discovered the San José in 2015. He spent four years with Dooley, a trove of historical documents, and the politicians and activists fighting for the wreck’s riches. The result is a page turner that is equal parts swashbuckling pirates and bureaucratic nightmare. It asks the question, to whom do the spoils of this conquest truly belong: the indigenous people whose ancestors were forced by the Spanish to mine their own lands, the treasure hunters who discovered it 300 years later, or the country whose waters it lay in?
I called up Sancton, my old colleague from Vanity Fair, to talk about writing habits, why outsiders write the best stories, and how to fact check pirates.
Three Point Four: I’m amazed at your discipline. You wrote half of Madhouse on your Metro-North commute. What were your writing habits like for Neptune’s Fortune with a full-time job and family?
Julian Sancton: I was remote at the beginning, so I did not have those two blissfully quiet trips on Metro-North every day. For Neptune’s Fortune, it was mornings and weekends. I don’t know if I want my bosses at The Hollywood Reporter to read this, but working remote if you don’t have something to do in the middle of the day you can—if you’re disciplined enough—just open the Word document, which is the hardest part of writing. Whenever you have a free moment, you can get a few sentences done.
My goal every day was an exceedingly achievable one: 400 words. That’s when I was writing. There was a year of pure research. But when I was in writing mode it was 400 words a day, seven days a week.
You never took a day off?
I would feel really guilty if I did, and I would make up for it the next day. By the way, I didn’t always hit my goal! But it’s about showing up.
These are the kinds of fun stories I gravitate to, the ones I want to read, and the ones I want to write. These are book versions of the movies I want to see. They’re like Indiana Jones.
There’s this mythic romantic ideal of the writer sitting down at the desk to write. But that’s not really how it works for most people. I liked what you said about sneaking in two sentences. Did you find it was easy to get into Neptune mode? You could pull up the doc and write?
It’s the same thing that happened with Madhouse. If I was walking to the train, walking the dog, laying awake at night, my thoughts were always on Neptune. That was my default mode. And the hardest part, as I said, is opening the Word document. Once you’ve opened it, it’s like taking a cold plunge. The hardest part is getting in. Once you’re in, you feel great.
With kids, you realize that sneaking five minutes of writing in when you can is the only way you’re going to finish the book.
What was the seed of the idea that sparked your interest in this story?
It started because I’d finished Madhouse and I was under pressure to come up with another idea. [Laughs.] The trick is not only does it need to be a good idea, but you need to be assured that it hasn’t been written about, that you’re not going to get scooped, and that you’re capable of doing it and it fits with your sensibility. The most important thing is that the sourcing is there. Because there are plenty of amazing stories about pirates I’d be interested in writing but those pirates didn’t leave a whole lot of notes behind.
I’d always wanted to write a book. My father is a writer. My grandfather was a writer. That’s what I considered the most noble calling. Unfortunately, it’s not the most lucrative one.
There’s not much historical documentation.
Not at all! I was figuring out if I wanted to do another wild sea story and pigeonhole myself. What interested me even more than boats was obsessives. I’m obsessed with obsessive people. I kept thinking back to what are the crazy stories that I could revisit? It was 2021, and had been five years since I’d read about the discovery of a Spanish galleon and the greatest sunken treasure in the history of the world. I remember thinking that the amount of treasure, which was reported to be in the billions, must have been a typo.
I figured I’d look into it and see what had happened. Surely something had happened in the five years since I’d read about it. Turned out it had only gotten more chaotic: More suspicion, more accusations thrown on either side, more of a legal clusterfuck. I started calling around and the people credited with finding the shipwreck in 2015 wouldn’t speak to me. It was impossible to reach them.
I finally got a call from my protagonist and pitched it as an article to Vanity Fair to test whether it had legs as a book, and they accepted it.
That can make it easier to sell to the publisher because you have a sample chapter that shows there is some commercial appeal.
That’s what I thought! [Laughs.] I ended up writing and reporting 18,000 words for the proposal. That’s a quarter of the book, most of which you’re not going to be able to reuse.
And there’s a chance that a publisher might not buy it. Do you also have to think about the economics of it? Is this idea commercially viable enough for me to get a proper advance?
Yes! I’d always wanted to write a book. My father is a writer. My grandfather was a writer. That’s what I considered the most noble calling. Unfortunately, it’s not the most lucrative one. When I was pitching Madhouse, I tried to figure out the bare minimum I would write it for and I landed on $50,000.
$50,000 effectively turns it into a loss leader and passion project.
Exactly. I realized, when I was writing the proposal for Madhouse, that I was not pursuing it because it was lucrative and would make a ton of money but because I like adventure stories, which happen to be a popular genre and a relatively healthy sector of the nonfiction market. Luckily, I ended up getting an advance that was well above what I had set out as my minimum.
Now I have to keep doing this kind of book! [Laughs.] Fortunately, these are the kinds of fun stories I gravitate to, the ones I want to read, and the ones I want to write. These are book versions of the movies I want to see. They’re like Indiana Jones. So it doesn’t feel like selling out to pursue this kind of story. It feels natural.
With the work we do at Three Point Four, we find it’s really helpful to come to our client work as outsiders. Subject matter expertise helps, yes, but oftentimes the best stories you read about sports are by generalists not by a baseball beat writer. Have you found it helpful with your books to be an outsider and not an expert?
Absolutely! You’re the first person I’ve spoken to who’s identified that thought process. I didn’t know anything about polar expeditions or shipwrecks. I had to learn these things for myself. And I hope I’m able to convey that enthusiasm and curiosity on the page.
Things that seem magical to me, for a specialist might seem pedestrian or so obvious as to not merit mentioning.
You’re able to parse what is interesting and what is academic and actually tell the story.
I know nothing, so I need to understand it and come up with metaphors, analogies, and ways of describing things that allow me to to understand them, and in turn help others understand them. That ends up being the same thing you were saying earlier: Great sports writing or great science writing is frequently by curious people who are able to find stories other people wouldn’t think to look at or wouldn’t think of as remarkable because they see it all the time.
Did you realize how many words we see in the newspaper are maritime in origin, like scuttle, riposte, broadside? They’re all over your book.
Masthead! It did strike me when writing this book. It’s funny that I’ve fallen into this niche of maritime books when I’m a piss-poor sailor.
Your protagonist and the entire treasure hunting community is known for tall tales. As a reporter, how do you separate embellishment from fact and 400-year-old legend from something that is actually in the historical record?
For certain historical accounts that I relate, if I have a doubt about their veracity, I make sure to raise the doubt in the reader as well. I offer a disclaimer: This may not be true, but it is a story that was told and so it’s worth telling.
With my protagonist, Roger Dooley, of course I had my doubts. Everybody called him a liar. Everybody said he was a con man. He speaks fast and loose and clearly embellishes. He has a haphazard train of thought. My journalistic spidey sense was telling me that this guy was not to be believed. But nevertheless I had access to him! Over the course of four years and hundreds of hours of interviews I got him to tell and retell his stories from different angles. You triangulate all of that and over time the sediment is the real story.
A lot of his life took place behind the veil of totalitarianism in Cuba, so it was hard to access people from that long ago from such an opaque country. But everybody confirmed the stories he was telling, minus this or that detail that was either misremembered or slightly embellished because he can’t help himself. Over time, it actually warmed my heart to realize the extent to which Roger actually was this character. That everything he said turned out to be largely and mostly true.
Here’s an example. I asked him to see his degree, because he claimed that he was a maritime archeologist. “Funny story about that!” he told me. “My wife got so mad at me that she burned all my papers.” I thought, well that’s convenient. Then I talked to a curator at The Met who is a Cuban archaeologist and recently left Cuba who told me that Roger was the authority in Cuba. He was the archaeologist everyone looked up to.
Have as many sources as possible, be as skeptical as possible, and know that tall tales and yarns are part of this world. If you let somebody talk for hours and hours, if it’s a lie they’ll contradict themselves. If it’s true, that truth will come out.
This was terrific. Thank you!