The news letter was circulated to members on Wednesday the 5th June – https://nemaritimetrust.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/NEMT-Publication-Summer-2024.pdf
The latest NEMT publication appears on first sight to be a straightforward account of the move of the restored lifeboat, the Henry Frederick Swan from her winter quarters on the slipway in South Shields to her summer base in NE1 Marina. The author was sowing much misinformation, some of which would perhaps, be better described in law as fraudulent misrepresentation and it begins in his opening paragraph under the title Headline News:-
Due to unforeseen circumstances our Website is currently still offline.
1st misrepresentation – the site had been online in its temporary home for about two months. We apologise if you have been affected by this or for any inconvenience caused. But be assured that we are trying to sort this out, in the meantime please be patient.
2. misinformation – there was no way they could sort it out because the website had been reclaimed by its rightful owner.
However, our new Website below will replace and be much better than the original which was very unreliable anyway.
3. misrepresentation – it functioned reliably and without without trouble from 2014 until it fell under the control of the author of this article in mid-March 2024.
Once this horrible little gremlin has been removed we hope to be back on-line very soon with our new improved Website address as follows – www.nemaritimetrust.org.uk.
4. misleading information – the horrid little gremlin turned out to be the author of the newsletter who had been removing the history of the North East Maritime Trust prior to 2019 and altering its history from 2020 to date.
Please also note our new email – info@nemaritimetrust.org.uk will soon be available on the website and we hope it will also be much more reliable than before.
5. The org.uk domain is a recognised domain name extension for charities and non-profit organisations registered in the United Kingdom but by the time NEMT had been awarded charitable status the blog for nemaritimetrust had been going for some time and so the suffix co.uk remained.
His commentary goes from the heading, Latest News, “After some updating and some essential repair work over the winter, HFS has now left the building. Pictured here approaching the NE1 quayside mooring, after a very pleasant sailing trip from NEMT with a stop over at St Peter’s for refreshments”, to a proposed calender of events and some detail about liaising with a University and the local Collage and Sea Cadets and an invitation:- “Also visit North East Maritime Trust on Facebook. X @NEMTnews” to the heading, Sunderland University.
The Facebook version of the history of the North East Maritime Trust has been given in www.facebook.com/henryfrederick.swan. which begins with and entry for February 2015 and ends in November 2019;
- X @NEMTnews, first entry refers to the year that NEMT was founded as a charity, 2005;
- X @NEMTnews, the second entry gives the date assumed to be the date when its author founded what was then a twitter stream, July 24 2020.
Sunderland University
Henry Frederick Swan launch day event – This was going to be early April but unfortunately very strong winds and a big swell stopped us from launching from the NEMT boatshed.
6th item of misinformation or misrepresentation. Those who were there, were fully aware that the trolley got stuck because of the misalignment of the tracks leading down to the river from the shed. Not because of any swell.
But that didn’t stop final year students from giving a great show of some fantastic music, great event publicity, and the introduction of QR Coded maritime history and heritage at South Shields. Everything went so well we hope to invite more students back later this year.
The rest of the Newsletter: Summer 2024 requires no comment except to say that the note halfway down page 4, “to email or just call in if you have any questions to nemaritime2020@gmail.com“, appears to have been superseded by alec.renwick@nemaritimetrust.org.uk.
The Chair of NEMT has now blocked his major critic from X @NEMTnews but the history of the Trust for its first fifteen years is still missing. No record of the Trust taking the Rachel Douglas up the East Coast of Scotland to Inverness and back via the Caledonian and Forth and Clyde canals, no record of her being used by the BBC and no record of how the Coat for a Boat was built and its tour round Britain and how the Trust acquired such skills, collectively to achieve so much.