From: Alec Renwick alec.renwick@nemaritimetrust.org.uk
Sent: 19 March 2024 21:22
To: Michael Dawson daw50nmdj@hotmail.co.uk
Subject: Re: NEMT v NFHT
Hi Michael
Firstly, I have no record of your membership being paid after October 2021 so it has expired, but I will double check just in case.
1. all he needed to do was to ask NEMT’s Treasurer and she would have told him that my subscription was up to date and was due for renewal in October.
While not an excuse, we haven’t had good service from the cooperative bank and the account has been closed recently via Peter Weightman.
2. irrelevant, my subscription has been paid by standing order to Lloyd Bank PLC for a number of years.
This after repeated notices on our newsletters to that effect and asking any member who currently pays their membership to the cooperative bank to change STO to our Lloyd’s account instead.
Further, collectively taking NEMT matters into your own NFHT hands by sending damaging emails to our members without my knowledge and posting similar dubious content on our website is very dangerous.
3. there were no damaging emails sent from me to any NEMT members and you will not get a straight answer from him if you ask him to produce an example.
Removing me as administrator is simply outrageous and not in keeping with good behaviour by anyone.
4. I took away his administrative privilege because he had used it to delete all the references to the Northumbrian Fisheries Heritage Trust and all the posts made to the original site from 2011 to 2019.
As far as the historic coble Golden Gleam is concerned, NEMT has offered to take her into our
workshop on three separate occasions for estimating possible costs involved. That means clearing floors and prep for her arrival each time, but to no avail.
5.similar to 3, I have seen no evidence of NEMT having offered to take Golden Gleam into the workshop before the end of 2024. The offer was made in 2022.
6.when work was completed on the Bedford Lifeboat she was taken into storage in September 2023 and it would not have taken more than a few days to clear a floorspace for the Golden Gleam.
So, we had simply given up and arranged for alternative projects instead, which are going very well actually.
7. One of the alternative projects to construct a modern boat out of marine ply for the Sea Cadets who were based a little way upstream. It was the second make work project to build a boat out of marine ply, the first having been completed some 15 years earlier.
These strained situations have led to stress all around, breakdowns in communication, especially with regard to missed details and arguments regarding poor minute taking and none constructive communication by your secretary, who as you know resigned some time ago, or do you?
8. it was not I, who got the minutes of the November AGM 2022 to be rewritten by Mr Lund because they reflected badly upon himself, it was Mr Renwick, the Chair of NEMT.
I will update you soon with regard to your membership situations.
9. my membership was removed without justification on the 8th of July.
Also don’t forget that the original members who setup NEMT which started early 2000 were Ted Smith, Robert Hunter, David Ash, Myself as Secretary and Peter Weightman as Chair, I don’t remember you ever being involved in its formation.
10. agreed but I was one of its first active members when I paid for the repair and refit of the Coble, Peggy on the slipway off Wapping St. The workshop contained not much more than the Henry Frederic Swan at that time.
My heart is completely connected to NEMT and despite all my previous help with NFHT boat restorations and repairs. These last few years have proved to open my eyes to a devious world I never imagined could exist within such a small dedicated group of like minded people. These details are correct and truthful, ask your NFHT secretary Peter.
11. there is no reccord of him having helped with the restoration of any of the NFHT boat restorations and repairs and the details were neither correct nor truthful:-
1) he did not give any help in restoring any of the vessels restored by the NEMT volunteers in all the years prior to 2019. He was never seen in the slipway shed while it was let by South Tyneside Council to Fred Crowell and even when it became part of the NEMT estate and in March 2016 when the Council extended the lease on both the Workshop and the Slipway Shed to September 43 he showed no interest in any of the vessels being restored until the Henry Frederick Swan was first taken out of the Workshop and put on the slipway on April 19th, 2019.
2) Peter was warned about the sort of lies that were being told behind his back on 20th March 2024.
Alec.
M Dawson
21-Feb-25
Updated 1-Jul-25
The first two corrections to Mr Renwick’s email of the 19th March need no comment.
The third correction points to the fact that he was lying when he said I was sending out damaging emails. They never existed.
The fourth points to the fact that if I had been paying more attention to what was happening to my Website nemaritimetrust.co.uk, I could possibly have stopped much of it destruction. Mr Renwick had become a bit overzealous when he removed all the posts from 2011 to 2019 because many of them referred to sound work done by myself and other NEMT volunteers on the Henry Frederick Swan during those years.
The Golden Gleam was now found a place in the NEMT workshop on Wapping St so the corrections 5 and 6 are now less pertinent.
The seventh is pertinent because Salma’s Dream was a project which like, the Tyne Life boat, was one of those that endeared NEMT to South Tyneside Council.
Eight refers to the fact that Mr Lund, did the Chair of NEMT, Mr Renwick, a favour by rewriting the minutes of the 2022 AGM, to overwrite those that had been prepared by the secretary immediately following the AGM.
Nine needs no comment, but with regard to point 10, I would like to say that I was well acquainted with Messrs Smith, Hunter and Weightman for many years before I had anything to do with Mr Renwick and I’ll let 11 stand for the time being.