Pegler, a jolly man with thick Burnsides whiskers, was the owner of a thriving plastics manufacturing company. One morning over breakfast, he read in the London Times that the Flying Scot, the famous crack express train that ran between Edinburgh and London during the late twenties and early thirties, was going to be sold for scrap. He contacted the chief director of the railroad and purchased the majestic old locomotive and its cars before they were destroyed. He then had the entire train immaculately restored to its former glory. Not content to let the train merely sit in a museum, Pegler took the Flying Scot on whistlestop tours throughout England and the United States.

Unfortunately, the operation proved exorbitantly costly and drove Pegler into bankruptcy. He was, however, able to donate the Flying Scot to a nonprofit foundation, which currently maintains and operates it for the public. People, young and old, can still thrill to the sounds of a steam locomotive as they are carried through the countryside under a column of black smoke and white steam.

At the bankruptcy hearing, the rather stern judge admonished Pegler: "Your downfall arose from your unbounded enthusiasm for railways.

The Flying Scot has been your folly."

Pegler, incredibly cheerful under the circumstances, answered, "Of course, I cannot say that I do not regret losing all my money, my house, my country manor, my villa in Italy, my Bentley and my Volvo, and being left with only what I stand up in. But I do not regret one moment buying the Flying Scot. It was saved and that is worth it all."

Obviously Alan Pegler is my kind of guy.

What follow are the chronicles of lost shipwrecks and the remarkable efforts by a group of dedicated NUMA volunteers, who worked long and hard to find them. The people who are portrayed, past and present, were and are real. The historical events, however, although factual, were slightly dramatized to give the reader a more focused insight into the action.

Through by Daylight

Monday, January 13, 1840 tapping from the two-wheeled hansom cab, a tall bearded man shivered from the bitter cold and buried his chin beneath the collar of his coat. He set his carpetbag on the icy sidewalk, reached up, and handed the fare to the cabbie, who sat elevated behind the carriage.

The man paused to glance at his pocket watch. The Roman numerals on the gold timepiece told him it was two minutes past three P.M.

Reassuring himself that his ticket was firmly in the breast pocket of his coat, he hurried through the terminal to the pier on the other side.

The bearded man had booked passage on the steamboat Lexington, bound from New York for Stonington, Connecticut, the terminus where passengers transferred onto the railroad to continue their journey to Boston. He was returning home there, where he was Smith Professor Of Modern Languages at Harvard, after giving three lectures and selling his latest poem. He never considered remaining in the confines of a New York hotel longer than necessary. He rarely felt comfortable in the city and was anxious to reunite with his wife and children without delay.