A month ago the counter for nemaritimetrust.co.uk passed 110,000 late on the 27th and this morning read 116,040 at 12:30 i.e. about 6000 a month while in March it was 8,500 which represents a drop of 30% interest in the website over the last six months. Hopefully it is a seasonal thing but I think it is because there has been very little reported on the progress made on the restoration of the Golden Gleam since February or on the boat they are making for the Sea Cadets who are based on on the same quay, about a hundred yards upstream, as reported in the publication of the Newsletter in April 2025.
The article about the about Sea Cadets boats appeared on the third page but what I found rather unsettling was the personal attack on my integrity delivered in its headlines.
Headline News – As you may know, our original website has been hijacked by a former member and is being used to disseminate incorrect information sometimes bordering on slander. This member left under a cloud of rancour and suspicion many years ago and his membership was rescinded.
The original website was created and maintained by me, the supposed former member, had been accurately reporting on what was happening on the slipway and in the shed off Wapping St for about a decade and in all that time I was never asked to make any corrections to anything that had been written. In later years the website had become somewhat redundant because the senior officers of NEMT had begun reporting their business on Social Media but my main point, about the site being a faithful record of what has been achieved in the restoration of historic vessels, still stands.
Logic, if nothing else implies that it was the author of those headlines who was the disseminator of incorrect and supposedly slanderous information. I think he meant libel and I had never left under any cloud, be it one of either rancour or suspicion, so his claim that my membership had been rescinded many years ago was very obviously false and or wishful thinking on his part.
It was not always so. In 2009 NEMT were asked to help with producing a boat for a project for the Customs House in South Shields and we had acquired some plans for a Selway Fisher 15ft Northumbrian Coble1 but were told that the Knitters wanted something a bit longer and it fell to me to produce some plans for a stretched version because some of the Trust were aware that I had taken the lines from the Coble Peggy that had been restored/rebuilt by Fred Crowell just a year or so before and it was thus the project that was to become Salma’s Dream was born.2
Mick Dawson, 27th August 2025.
1 – plans for the Selway Fisher 15ft Northumbrian Coble. As the copy seen, had been returned to NEMT, it was very much easier buy another set from Selway Fisher.
2 – the lines for the 21 foot Coble which were agreed by NEMT and the Knitting Group at the outset of the Project.
Over the last two days I’ve corrected the grammar, never one of my strong points, and while I was doing that it occurred to me that Salma’s Dream could only be realised if the Knitters and NEMT were working to the same overall plan and I remembered that I still possessed a copy the lines of the boat that was built, sawn into 4 parts then carried along to the Customs House by us in 2009.
When it was agreed that the parts when assembled would fit the ticket and everyone was happy, we took some pictures of what was to become the ‘Coat for a Boat’ and my favourite was of the ‘Project Manager’ sat in the bow section.
The whole lot was then carried back to the workshop where we added such things as the droughts, gunnels and masts etc. while knitters from all over the world set to, to make everything, from her coat and sails down to the to the pebbles on which she would be beached.