Improper Conduct

To those who follow the Website nemaritimetrust.co.uk, here is a criticism of the conduct of the current Chair of NEMT, Mr A Renwick.

Dear All

I received a copy of the NEMT Newsletter for the Autumn of 2024 but unfortunately filed it under Publication rather than Newsletter and discovered my error just a few weeks ago and anyone who has any concerns about the conduct of the Trust’s Chairman can now view a copy.

Before we look into any detail I maintain it was misfiled because it was seen by looking up the last newsletter posted in his website nemaritimetrust.org.uk.

One or two things one must bear in mind when reading this copy and the first was that Mr Renwick falsely claimed in a broken promise that the coble Golden Gleam lay rotting St Peters. In his words of the 15th February, 2024:-
“This inaction was repeated many times, especially regarding the hoped for restoration of your very historic coble Golden Gleam; now rotting away at St Peters. A very poor reflection on any so called Heritage Trust.

Four months later, acting as the Chair of NEMT, he accused me of stealing my own website, nemaritimetrust.co.uk, to drive a wedge between the trustees of NFHT and NEMT by threatening me on the 18th of June 2024 in an email which he had copied to six others besides myself:-

I simply ask all at NFHT to make Mick Dawson see sense and transfer our nemaritimetrust.co.uk website back to NEMT where it belongs.
As ever, I’m always available to talk in an attempt to end with a satisfactory conclusion.
Unfortunatly until that happens NEMT will not be in a position to discuss any future NFHT collaboration or plan vessel repairs on these premises.

The recovered Newsletter of August 2024 was not the first newsletter to express a personal grudge against a fellow member of NE Maritime Trust. The first was found in his Newsletter of Summer 2024 which was published about the same time as the email of 18th June, in which he declared:-

Headline News – Due to unforeseen circumstances our Website is currently still offline. 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. However, our new Website below will replace and be much better than the original which was very unreliable anyway.
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

‘Our Website’ was neither his nor offline by the time that Newsletter was published and to say it was unreliable was more than just an opinion, it was an outright lie. I discovered in March 2024 that my removal as the administrator of nemaritimetrust.co.uk was by Mr Renwick who had misinformed TSOHost, the website provider, in order to replace me with himself.

Fortunately I had a copy of what remained of the Website on my PC after much of it had been removed by whom I now think of as the ‘True Gremlin’ and together with many of the records I had kept since about the time I had created the nemaritimetrust.co.uk so that the site one sees today much resembles the historical site with a few gaps. This reconstructed site was the one sent to another provider with myself as its administrator, by the end of April 2024.

A good while before the reconstruction of my old site and the reason it had to be done was that Mr Renwick had been given some editorial control of the original site but he abused the privilege to delete many of the posts that referred to the restoration by NEMT of what I consider to be the Northumbrian Fishing Fleet. It consisted the Rachel Douglas, the Favourite, the Sovereign and the Cobles Peggy and Royal Diadem. The Royal Diadem is included because when first restored, she was in the care of the Northumbrian Fishing Heritage Trust.

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HL80: Friarage, a Hartlepool Coble

In December 2025 the North East Maritime Trust took on the task of repairing and making the Hartlepool Museum’s Coble Friarage, seaworthy again:-

In April 2026 a visit to the workshop in Wapping Street showed that NEMT had taken on a job with HL80 that would require considerable resources in terms of materials and manpower to make her seaworthy again and one only has to look at the likes of the Henry Frederick Swan in the National Historic Ships Register to get some idea of this.

There is a similar post in the Register for the Rachel Douglas and while it says in her ‘History’. “The vessel is in excellent sea going state of repair and is subject to annual survey and maintenance” it does not tell you that until 2019, the excellent sea going sate of repair, had either been commissioned or completed by those in charge of NEMT.1

Much of that work being done on the Friarage would be better done on the slipway run by NEMT rather than in their workshop and while a coble would not be finished to the same standard that was given to the Henry Frederick Swan, she would not be given back to the Hartlepool Museum without a good paint job!

It is entirely possible in the agreement between the Hartlepool Museum and NEMT that there was no requirement to make her river or seaworthy and that would mean that to use the slipway she would need to be craned both onto and off the slipway cradle to get any extensive work done on her.

NEMT could make a replica cradle to sit in their workshop which would mean that the Henry Frederick Swan could be left on the slipway cradle have her forward cabin like top repaired much as the aft cabin, on which the steering gear is fitted, was done over 6 years ago and prior to her launch in 2019 which attracted quite a crowd on the day she left the slipway:-

I hope that those in charge find a way round the problem of three vessels requiring a lot of work and do not forget the Golden Gleam which has been left out in the cold again but I’m sure it will be all explained in the 2026 NEMT Newsletter and I am looking forward seeing to how they propose manage things so that the Golden Gleam is not forgotten again.

Mick Dawson
June 2026

1. On Tuesday 3rd December 2019 I gave Alec Renwick the right to make corrections to any of the posts to that I had made to nemaritimetrust.co.uk over many years but soon discovered that no corrections had been made but many of the posts, the ones that referred mostly to the Rachel Douglas, Favourite, Peggy and Royal Diadem, were missing and as a precaution I removed all the rights that he had been given.

2. Subsequent actions by Mr A Renwick regarding the missing posts have shown that they had been deliberately deleted but what concerned me more was that he gained control of my website by misleading one of TSOHost’s advocates. When I discovered this fact in mid March 2024 I had no option but to transfer nemaritimetrust.co.uk to a new provider: Ionos.

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NEMT Newsletter: Spring 2025

Dear NEMT Volunteer

From the Newsletter produced by Mr A Renwick in the Spring of 2025:

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.

The original website nemaritimetrust.co.uk was produced from 2011 by me with the agreement of Mr Renwick, as he was going to be away on other business for some time and in 2014 nemaritimetrust.co.uk was registered with Nominet and it still registered with them under my name. It was never used to disseminate incorrect information, slanderous or not and if one were to ask Mr A Renwick for an example of any wrong doing by me he would fail to produce one single example.

This member left under a cloud of rancour and suspicion many
years ago and his membership was rescinded.

I never left many years ago and was a member under the rules of the North East Maritime Trust until Mr Renwick decided my membership would be forfeited because I would not hand him the nemaritimetrust.co.uk so that he could broadcast misinformation on it such as shown in this post to a wider audience. For example – please see his 2024 Autumn Newsletter and note that while his newsletter had a circulation of a couple of hundred at the most the nemaritimetrust.co.uk had reached about 150 thousand by the turn of this year.

Our new official website can be found using the following link:
www.nemaritimetrust.org.uk.

As you can see the nemaritimetrust.org.uk was set up to replace mine and appears to be well out of date.

I’ll say no more for the time being.

Cheers
Mick Dawson

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The Gremlin’s Tale

For the attention of the NEMT’s Chair and his supporters.
In August 2025, a comment was made by me about his use of a Gremlin to describe the goings on at meetings held in the workshop of the Maritime Trust and please bear in mind that it was not I who introduced us all to the Gremlin.

On Saturday, the second of August 2025, I decided to travel down from Amble to visit the North East Maritime Trust (NEMT) to see how their team of volunteers were progressing with the restoration of the Coble Golden Gleam and was disappointed to find both the workshop and slipway closed and discovered on my way home, the Rachel Douglas, looking like she had been abandoned in the so called ‘South Shields Marina’.

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Self-Promotion by NEMT Chair

From: Alec Renwick alec.renwick@nemaritimetrust.org.uk
Sent: 15 March 2024 12:49
To: Peter W; Branson, Richard; Paul Nicholson; Mick Dawson
Cc: Kevin Lund kevin.lund@nemaritimetrust.org.uk; Barnard, Keith; Dr Griffiths, Sue
Subject: Consider Urgent

He starts his self-promotion by broadcasting fraudulent misinformation about two of its long time serving of its members, Peter Weightman and Mick Dawson:-

Mr Weightman
It is apparent that you, presumably acting for (NFHT), have sent an unauthorised personal letter to NEMT members which contravenes data protection laws and your previous position as Secretary of this Trust.
I shall also remind you that data protection laws state that unauthorised use of personal data is an offence which can carry very high fines.
Hypocrisy! it was not Peter Weightman but Alec Renwick who associated his supporters, Messrs Lund and Barnard with the Trustees of NFHT: Peter, Paul, Richard, Mick Dawson and the Treasurer of NEMT: Sue Griffiths.
In this case any member can ask for all data and messages he has regarding them, which must be supplied within 28 days.
Peter Weightman responded soundly about 7 hours after receiving the false accusations made by Mr Renwick by raising four points:-

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Views per Month

Over the week-end of the last day of February 2026, we passed 150 thousand views for the NE Maritime Trust and that was the 22nd month, since it was rescued by copying what was left of it into a sub-set of theharbourview.co.uk, and equates to 6,800 views per month. A review held held about a year and a half ago showed that there had been 50 thousand views in six months which equated to 8,300 views per month.

Both these figures compared very favourably to the 80,000, about 700 views per month, for the first decade of the site’s existence and while peak of over 8000 for the middle of 2024 was a pleasant surprise, here’s hoping that they won’t drop much below the current level of views of about a few % under 7000 a month.

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WordPress and this Website.

Hi! Some themes have automatically updated to their latest versions on your site at https://nemaritimetrust.co.uk. No further action is needed on your part.

These themes are now up to date:
– Extendable (from version 2.1.0 to 2.1.1)

If you experience any issues or need support, the volunteers in the WordPress.org support forums may be able to help.

https://wordpress.org/support/forums/

The WordPress Team

This sort of notice is given out fairly regularly but it has only just occurred to me as the owner, that it could be put to good use, and that is to challenge the repeated demand by the self appointed Chair of the North East Maritime Trust, that I hand him the ownership of the site: nemaritimetrust.co.uk.1

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Henry Frederick Swan?

While the life boat moored next to the steps is not the Henry Frederick Swan, she showed so many similarities that one must assume she was built on the Isle of White by S E Saunders at about the same time as the HFS was built but what I first noticed about this old photo of Amble were the two coal trucks on the skyline, on the further of the wooden bridges or staithes. Those structures served at least two collieries and the remnants of one of them was still there and rather impressive when I first visited in Amble in 1974.

About 30 years later I was persuaded by a good friend to acquire a coble very much like one of the cobles moored in Amble Harbour along side the lifeboat and I brought her up to the Tyne from Hartlepool. She was the Glad Tidings and I gave her back original name, Peggy to avoid confusion with any of the Glad Tidings to be found in Newbiggin, Amble or Seahouses and she was restored, firstly by Fred Crowell, with myself as one his ‘apprentices’ and later by another member of the NE Maritime Trust, Dave Parker.

By the time I finally made my home in Amble in 2019, she had been sold to the sister Trust to NEMT 1 and while she is now over a 100 years old, having been built in 1924, I was lead to believe she had been sailed during the summers of 2024 and ’25 by the members of the North East Maritime Trust and their friends though sadly I have no photographic evidence that she had been laken out for a sail in the last couple of years2.

Mick Dawson
Amble
16 & 19 January 2026

1. Now re-registered as Northumbria Fishing Heritage, Company Number: 1210068

2. – recent photos are not available at the moment because the content isn’t available. Facebook says “When this happens, it’s usually because the owner only shared it with a small group of people or changed who can see it, or it’s been deleted. picture are not available” There is however, a photo of her sailing off Souter Lighthouse as part of the event in the 2010s and that’s Mick Dawson using an oar to get her out of ‘stays’. I believe the event was to celebrate an anniversary of the handover the Lighthouse and the keepers cottages to the National Trust.

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AI v AR

A public declaration of the ownership of nemaritimetrust.co.uk

AI Overview

The domain name theharbourview.co.uk is currently associated with an individual named Mick Dawson (or Michael Dawson), based on information from the North East Maritime Trust website.
This individual has been listed as a contact for email addresses associated with the domain, and public snippets from the North East Maritime Trust site discuss a dispute over the ownership of the domain, in which Mr. Dawson was involved.
Due to UK data privacy regulations (GDPR), the specific personal registration details of most .uk domain owners are hidden from public WHOIS searches by default unless they have explicitly opted to make them public.

AR’s view: for those who are new to this site AR is Alec Renwick, the Chair of the North East Maritime Trust and his view was explained in some detail in a post made on the 24th June 2024 and updated 3 months later on the 26th September.

Mick Dawson
6th January 2026

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Threat by Mr A Renwick

with corrections and adjustments by the owner of nemaritimetrust.co.uk:-
From: Alec Renwick <alec.renwick@nemaritimetrust.org.uk>
Sent: Friday, November 21, 2025 15:49
To: Mick Dawson <daw50nmdj@hotmail.co.uk>
Subject: Fwd: NEMT Membership 2005-6
Not 2005-2006 but from 2005 to 2025

Mr Michael Dawson;

Relating to our previously sent emails regarding this matter.

On the 8th July 2024, with no explanation, the owner of nemaritimetrust.co.uk was sent by the Chairperson of NEMT, the owner of nemaritimetrust.org.uk:-

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