On June 18th 2024 the Chair of the North East Maritime Trust wrote to three Trustees the of trust of which he was the Chair and to the three Trustees of the Northumbrian Fisheries Heritage Trust and I responded later that day with an email to the Chair of the NFHT explaining why he should not respond to it and concluded:- “Two things, firstly his use of nemaritimetrust.org.uk in the second email to me and that the email to you this morning was also from .org.uk., and secondly that Mr Barnard is missing from Alec’s list.
I think Mr Barnard has been advised by someone in the RNLI or maybe his former boss in the Police Force to put as much distance between himself and Alec as possible.
Mr Barnard had been a trustee NEMT for a few years and I’d like to point out that neither Mr Parker nor myself had been trustees of either Trusts for some time when Mr Renwick accused me of having stolen the Website nemaritimetrust.co.uk, before I continue with my criticism of his email:-
From: Alec Renwick <alec.renwick@nemaritimetrust.org.uk>
Sent: 18 June 2024 00:09
To: Peter W; Mick Dawson; Branson, Richard; PAUL; David Parker
Cc: Kevin Lund <kevin.lund@nemaritimetrust.org.uk>; Dr Griffiths, Sue
Subject: NEMT Website
Dear All
As you will be aware the previously transferred to NEMT, owned and paid for nemaritimetrust.co.uk Website has been stolen by Mick Dawson who appears to have taken advantage of its unlocked status.
1. The Website had not been transferred to NEMT and it was not stolen, they may have been paying for it for about five years but they did not own it. Think of it as more of a subscription to a website where they controlled any financial transactions made as a result of its publication. There is and deliberately so, no longer any donate button on the current version of nemaritimetrust.co.uk. *
This recently re-established Website naming NFHT as a victim, is being used by Mick as a means of negative, damaging communication about NEMT, its Trustees and myself.
2. I asked Nominet to move the Website away from the provider, TSOHost so that I could regain control of it while it was being set up with another provider. TSOHost had given Mr Renwick control of it and he had abused that privilege, by removing any reference to NFHT from nemaritimetrust.co.uk. It was of little concern as I thought that NFHT should have its own website. Of more concern was the fact that he was calling me for some serious misdemeanours, the most serious being that I was a thief, please see also No. 1, above.
Continuing with this senseless, costly, illegal practice will only continue to damage both NFHT and NEMT organisations.
3. He persuades one of TSOHost’s Agent into giving him total control of nemaritimetrust.co.uk, and proceeds to remove 8 years of the history of both Trusts from the Website and then has the gall to blame me for supposed senseless, and costly illegal practices that may cause damage to an organisation I have faithfully supported for nearly twenty years. He may have gained control of the Website in March 2024 but it was not his to do with as he wished. I contacted TSOHost when I discovered that I had been locked out of my Website on March 15th by Mr Renwick and they said they would look into it and while I was waiting for a reply I sent an email “Consider Urgent” to the Trustees of NFHT.
I have tried to speak to Mick recently, only to be told “I should know why”
Well, I don’t!
1
4. On 7th April, I had travelled down to Tyneside to watch a lifeboat, one which had overwintered in NEMT’s boat shed, being launched and was discussing the whys and wherefores of the delayed launch with someone I had worked with over several years, restoring boats etc. when I was interrupted by Mr Renwick who said he wished to have a word with me and I simply responded by asking him to put was he wished say in writing and one does not have to read very far into this page to understand why the Chair of NFHT about the Chair of the NEMT was asked to put what he wanted to say to me in writing.
One reason I can only imagine, is that in an attempt to make NEMT more sustainable by increasing costs for the use of our facilities, NFHT appears to have taken this as a threat to its existence.
5. There is something amiss here: he has actually denied the use of the slipway to NFHT and forced them to go elsewhere to maintain the vessels in their care, somewhere that does not have a volunteer workforce, unlike NEMT.
Following a long series of objectionable email messaging and subsequent threats therein haven’t helped to improve this situation, but have simply made matters much worse.
6. There was no long series of objectionable emails from me and certainly no threatening ones. There was an email from myself in January 2023 with an attachment which raised a timely objection to a fraud that was proposed at a meeting, for which no minutes were given. This was the only email to the Chair of NEMT about which he took exception.
NEMT’s Treasurer will be able to confirm that the ‘missing’ funds were paid within a few days.
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.
7. It never belonged to Mr Renwick nor any Trustee of NEMT and I had resigned my Trusteeship of NFHT when I realised that the Chair of NEMT had been repeating his ‘NEMT v NFHT’ version of the ‘us v them’ game since November 2022. I needed to stand aside from that argument to protect the integrity of the Website nemaritimetrust.co.uk and my resignation from NFHT was accepted in April 2024.
As ever, I’m always available to talk in an attempt to end with a satisfactory conclusion.
8. There will never be a satisfactory conclusion while he calls me a thief to hide the fact that he fraudulently claimed ownership of nemaritimetrust.co.uk and thereby gained control of it. What he did not know was that I had received confirmation from TSOHost that the domain had always belonged to me three days before he told the Trustees, David Parker and myself, to what amounts to a stream of misinformation. Understandably TSOHost were loth to switch my user back into the post of the administrator of nemaritimetrust.co.uk, and is why I did not receive a response from their Agent on the 15th March, please see also No. 3, above.
Unfortunatly until that happens NEMT will not be in a position to discuss any future NFHT collaboration or plan vessel repairs on these premises.
9. In plain English he has said that NFHT will not be able to use either the Workshop or the Slipway, 2-3 Wapping St, South Shields until:-
1 he gains control of nemaritimetrust.co.uk again;
2 talks about nemaritimetrust.co.uk end with a satisfactory conclusion.
The first will never happen because he betrayed my trust in him by deleting the history of NFHT and NEMT of the years when the two Trusts worked in unison and the second was referred to the UK Domain Dispute Resolution Service for mediation which was private and confidential but it came to nothing because the refusal to hand over the domain nemaritimetrust.co.uk was not abusive.
Alec Renwick. NEMT Trustee and Chair.
* the donate button is now on a site dedicated, almost exclusively, to the life boat “Henry Frederic Swan”