Even as far back as 2010 the issue of domain names was understood by more than just myself. One of the senior Trustees of the North East Maritime Trust, who is no longer with us, wrote to Alec Renwick and I:-
From: Tim West
Sent: 15 June 2010 17:45
To: Michael Dawson; Alec Renwick
Subject: Domain name
HI Alec and Mike,
This attached arrived today but I seem to remember that last year there appeared to be some confusion as to which domain names we are using? Do we need more than one, especially as we have to pay for the privilege of using them them.
I will leave it to you to sort out which one we are using.
Tim
The attached was a sales pitch from a firm called Domain Name Solutions trying to sell him nemaritimetrust.com and Tim was right of course as the domains that we were using at that time, were nemt.co.uk and nemaritimetrust.co.uk. By 2014 the former had fallen into disuse and while he said we have to pay for the privilege of using them, I was actually paying the latter. I had had no correspondence with Alec for three years but I knew that Mark Hardy had taken an active interest in the website(s):-
From: Mick Dawson
Sent: 23 July 2014 16:49
To: Tim West
Cc: mark hardy
Subject: Fw: hosting nemaritimetrust.co.uk
Hi Tim,
I’ll take a copy of the invoice down to NEMT workshop when I’ve paid.
Is that OK?
cheers Mick
I think Tim was aware that I had moved to Amble and quite reasonably suggested an alternative, though he appears to have confused the roles played in maintaining the site by Mark and myself:-
Hi Mick,
I can send Mark a cheque directly to make things easier. OK?
Tim
The domain nemt.co.uk had died a natural death and I carried on paying for the domain nemaritimetrust.co.uk to Daily.co.uk for the next few years because it was simpler not to bother Tim West who was the treasurer of NEMT at that time and I could easily afford the yearly charge.
In January 2018, I heard of the death of Tim and naturally carried on paying for the domain and when the provider was switched to TSOHost and the charges increased and I managed to persuade the board of NEMT to pay cost of maintaining nemaritimetrust.co.uk while I continued to look after it. There were no complaints because I took care to make sure that my posts truly reflected what had been achieved and was being done by both NEMT and NFHT.
Where was Alec Renwick in all this, one might wonder? He certainly had nothing to do with NEMT until he contacted Paul Nicholson in October 2019 about access to the NEMT website:-
From: Alec Renwick<alec.renwick@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 6 Oct 2019 at 14:38
Subject: Re: NEMT web site etc., – Confidential
To: Paul Nicholson
Hello Paul, I’m back!
Can’t get access to the NEMT Website. Any chance you can ask Mick to change my name and password as a matter of urgency please. Name to chockerblock and password to…
The upshot was that I gave him administrative rights to nemaritimetrust.co.uk which he abused by deleting all the references to NFHT along with all the posts from 2010 to 2019 and as soon as I discovered what he was doing I removed his administrative rights. Quite simply, he had betrayed my trust in him.