NFHT and NEMT

Posted on April 2, 2025 by Mick Dawson

When I acquired the Coble, Peggy in 2007, I lived in Greens Place with good views over the river Tyne to North Shields and Tynemouth and it was not long before I joined NEMT but by 2014 I had fallen out of favour, not with NEMT but with South Tyneside Council and decided to settle in Amble. My first attempt failed because I had trouble selling my house in Greens Place.

I had first put it on the market in 2014 but various estate agents had failed me and when I returned to South Shields in 2015, they failed me again so I sold it privately with two of NEMT’s volunteers as witnesses and for that I was extremely grateful because I was then able to afford to make a home in Amble in the late Summer of 2017. It did however, take a legal firm in Newcastle to dot the i’s and cross the t’s and the sale was officially said to have been completed in 2019.

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NEMT v NFHT : 2

Posted on March 14, 2025 by Mick Dawson

From Part 1 of the divide, it would appear that a chairman, Mr A Renwick, of the charity, NEMT, is running it as a private group, and apart from 2 different versions of the NEMT AGM of 2023, that I recieved from another of NFHT’s Trustees for discussion, I have not seen the minutes of any of their AGMs since 2018 apart from the pair associated with the AGM of 2022.

At that meeting it was noted that, NEMT’s close association with the NFHT was referred to with Martin Wilson suggesting a long-term amalgamation might be a good idea but it got no further and it appears that the suggestion that the communications between the boards of trustees and the membership was described as much in need of improvement fell on stony ground as well. The volunteers of the two trusts had been working as one since at least 2015 but it appears that from 2020 that the Trustees were not working to achieve the same aims.

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Claim and Counter Claim

Posted on March 1, 2025 by Mick Dawson

Between the Trustees of NEMT and one of its long standing Members.

At the beginning of 2023 it was becoming clear the Chairman of the North East Maritime Trust with the help of people like Keith Barnard was deliberately withholding monies owing to the Northumbrian Fisheries Heritage Trust. One of the tactics employed by them to delay the payment was to accuse me of making slanderous accusations and sending aggressive personal emails but they were lying, found out, and the debt of £13,000 was paid in May 2023.

It took four months to go through the legal wrangles before the debt of £13,000 was paid and I can confirm that I have never recieved an apology from either Mr Renwick or Mr Barnard.

Mr Barnard and Mr Renwick parted company before the failed attempt at a relaunch of the Henry Frederick Swan in 2024

Mick Dawson, 1st March 2025

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Why nemaritimetrust.co.uk

Posted on February 21, 2025 by Mick Dawson

and not nemaritimetrust.org.uk

‘.co.uk’ or ‘.uk’ mean much the same thing and they are ideal for any business or individual who is solely UK-based and really wants to let people know that they operate within the UK.

‘.org.uk’ is extension designed for ‘organisations’ – which can be a slightly grey area when trying to figure out what exactly defines an ‘organisation’ – but for the purpose of domain extensions it simply means ‘non-profit organisations’ and includes charities.

In 2007 when I was looking for a domain name for the North East Maritime Trust, ‘nemt.org.uk’ was not available because it in use by the North East Mountain Trust which had been going since 1980 but ‘.co.uk’ was and while nemt.co.uk fitted the bill, it had been taken by Alec Renwick who was one of NEMT’s founder members and a combination of events led me to use nemaritimetrust.co.uk for my website without much thought behind the choice between ‘name.co.uk’ and ‘name.org.uk’ having been made.

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Golden Gleam – January 2025

Posted on January 25, 2025 by admin

The Coble just inside the NEMT Shed. She lay in the corner of St Peters Marina for a few years, photo mislaid, and it took quite a few years to get her under cover.

She laid well wrapped up at St Peters because NFHT boats were barred from the Wapping St Workshop and Slipway while Chair of NEMT tried to seize control of this website, nemaritimetrust.co.uk, from its owner who had maintained it and its predecessor since about 2008.

Called ‘Broken Promise’ on Facebook, 2022-24.

One will have to ask the current Chair of NEMT, info@nemaritimetrust.org.uk, why he relented in the case of the Golden Gleam while the Rachel Douglas, Favourite and the Sovereign remain excluded from the slipway off Wapping Street, South Shields.

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NEMT and the Coble: Golden Gleam

Posted on January 10, 2025 by Mick Dawson

marinechandlery.com • 10 January 2025
•••
We’re proud to be supporting the restoration of the historic sailing coble, Golden Gleam, in partnership with Northumbria Fishing Heritage Trust.

This incredible project is now underway at the NEMT workshop in South Shields, Wapping Street, where work has already begun on stripping back layers of paint to reveal the challenges ahead. We’re excited to supply materials and follow the progress of this important restoration, preserving the legacy of our region’s rich maritime history.

Stay tuned as we share updates on this fantastic project.

North East Maritime Trust

#GoldenGleamRestoration #NorthumbriaFishingHeritage #MarineChandlery #MaritimeHistory #BoatRestoration #UKboating #uksailing

Golden Gleam gets to the NEMT Workshop in January 2025!
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Golden Gleam, 8-Jan-25

Posted on January 8, 2025 by admin

Better late than never!

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NEMT: ~~ Before and After the Bedford ~~

Posted on December 31, 2024 by Mick Dawson

Her restoration by NEMT began in 2019 and took about two years. She was built by Lancelot Lambert at the Lawe and was launched from the Lawe Building Yard, Dec 21st 1886. Miss Bedford, who lived in the South of England, bequeathed £1,000 to the Lifeboat Society Trustees for the lifeboat to be named Bedford in memory of her brother who was an engineer with the Tyne Improvement Commission.

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Salma’s Dream

Posted on December 16, 2024 by Mick Dawson

About 14 years ago I had heard that the North East Maritime Trust – NEMT, had been asked to think about making boat as a prop for a knitting group for an exhibition in the Customs House in South Shields but while the Trustees showed little interest, one or two of us did.
About a decade before, a friend who had heard that I had moved to South Shields, with the intention of taking up boating again, had persuaded me to buy a coble that was for sale in Hartlepool. I had sailed one with him in Seahouses and was easily persuaded because I thought it would not to difficult to take the ‘Glad Tidings’ back into sail again.

“Dream on” I hear you say but I was told soon after I decided to bring her up from Hartlepool, I heard that she was originally built on spec and named ‘Peggy’ when she was bought from Harrison’s Boat Yard in 1924 and the first time she was repainted I asked for her name to be rewritten as Peggy and that is what she has been called since.

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Northumbrian Coble – Peggy 2

Posted on December 12, 2024 by Mick Dawson

Ownership

It was customary with a coble to put the name of the owner on the port stern quarter and while this was particularly true of those fishing off the Northumberland Coast it appears that with a good many boats to be found in Filey and harbours on the Yorkshire Coast, they followed the same tradition.

About a year or so after Peggy was brought back from Hartlepool she was lifted out and given a coat of paint and while I was confident burning off the old paint and repainting her I was no use at sign writing. She was called the Glad Tidings and I had been told that she was called Peggy by the first owners so she was renamed to avoid confusion with all the other vessels named Glad Tidings to be found in the North East. Her home port written as South Shields and the owner as myself:-

When we came to give her, her home port, Paul Robinson who was doing the signwriting for me, remembered that he had not long before put BK7 on the side of a similar coble and as I had a Port of Tyne registration number for her of 479, I asked him to put that on, that rather than that of Berwick, so that anyone who needed to know could check with them that Peggy had not been put back into use as a commercial fishing boat.

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