Overview
Sunk in a British ambush in 1708, the Spanish galleon San Jose was rumored to have one of the richest cargos ever lost at sea. Though treasure hunters have searched for the wreck's legendary bounty, no one knows exactly how much went down with the ship or exactly where it sank. Here, Carla Rahn Phillips confronts the legend of lost treasure with documentary records of the San Jose's final voyage and suggests that the loss of silver and gold en route to Spain paled in comparison to the loss of the six hundred men who went down with the ship. Drawing from rich archival records, Phillips presents a biography of the ship and its crew. With vivid detail and meticulous scholarship, the author tells the stories of the officers, sailors, apprentices, and pages who manned the ship and explains the historical context in which the San Jose became prey to the British squadron. But the story does not end with the sinking of the San Jose. While Phillips addresses the persistent question of how much treasure was on board when the ship went down, she focuses on the human dimensions of the tragedy as well. She recovers the accounts of British naval officers involved in the battle, and examines the impact of the ship's loss on the Spanish government, the survivors, and the families of the men who perished. Original, comprehensive, and compelling, ""The Treasure of the San Jose"" separates popular myth from history and sheds light on the human lives associated with a ""treasure"" ship.
Full Product Details
Author: Carla Rahn Phillips (Union Pacific Professor in Comparative Early Modern History, University of Minnesota)
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Imprint: Johns Hopkins University Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.20cm
, Height: 2.50cm
, Length: 22.90cm
Weight: 0.522kg
ISBN: 9780801885808
ISBN 10: 0801885809
Pages: 280
Publication Date: 27 August 2007
Recommended Age: From 17
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
,
Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Out of stock
The supplier is temporarily out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you on backorder and shipped when it becomes available.
Reviews
A model work of historical investigation: painstaking, meticulous, searching. It is also an example of the best sort of microhistory: exhaustive in depth, but far-reaching in breadth. Documents are handled with unfailing deftness, and with a detective's tenacity, to provide a blow-by-blow account of the battle in which the San Jose went down and to resolve the question of how much cash it carried. Phillips displays versatile historianship, with outstanding work on ship construction, shipboard life, and the diplomatic background to the war. - Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Tufts University
"""A model work of historical investigation: painstaking, meticulous, searching. It is also an example of the best sort of microhistory: exhaustive in depth, but far-reaching in breadth. Documents are handled with unfailing deftness, and with a detective's tenacity, to provide a blow-by-blow account of the battle in which the San Jose went down and to resolve the question of how much cash it carried. Phillips displays versatile historianship, with outstanding work on ship construction, shipboard life, and the diplomatic background to the war."" - Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Tufts University"""
Author Information
Carla Rahn Phillips is the Union Pacific Professor in Comparative Early Modern History at the University of Minnesota. She has published two award-winning books with Johns Hopkins, Six Galleons for the King of Spain: Imperial Defense in the Early Seventeenth Century and Spain's Golden Fleece: Wool Production and the Wool Trade from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century.
