I discovered on the 15th March 2024, that I was no longer able to log into a website that had addressed the needs of two trusts for a good while. It was nemaritimetrust.co.uk and was created by me about the time when members of NEMT began to populate NFHT which was about ten years ago and some information about it was posted on the website which at that time was hosted by daily.co.uk.
Daily.co.uk were taken over by TSOHost and the change was so seamless that it would not be noticed by anyone except the person who had to administer the website, me again, and it took place before the two Trusts were forced apart by unequal division of Gordon’s legacy in late 2019.
While I was no longer in control, I could still view the site and discovered by reading its last post, which was more suited to social media than a sensible website, that I had been replaced by the Chairman of the North East Maritime Trust, Mr Alec Renwick.
I also noticed that he had removed much of the history of the two trusts from 2005 to late 2019 and it was replaced almost exclusively, by the history of the restoration of the life boats, Bedford, Tyne and Henry Frederick Swan.
TSOHost could have easily reversed the switch of the editor of nemaritimetrust.co.uk back to me in April but told me that the argument about who owned the domain name should be resolved, between Mr Renwick and myself, before they would act and I decided that the only thing to do to preserve the integrity of nemaritimetrust.co.uk was to switch service providers.
March 15th, a Coincidence
I was copied into an email from Mr Renwick, which happened to be the same day that that I found that I could not log into nemaritimetrust.co.uk, attacking both the Chairman of NFHT and I of serious misdemeanours. In his words:-
1 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.
2. I also notice that Mick Dawson (NFHT) has conspired to scam our website with similar unauthorised data, blocking any input from NEMT.
Peter Weightman had not sent any such letter(s) and the website was not Mr Renwick’s, nor any other member of NEMT’s, it was mine and parts of it had been overwritten by Mr Renwick, not I. His two accusations were therefore false. He did however provide me with an opportunity to point this out to Peter and I took the opportunity to copy it to Mr Renwick’s new email address based on the site @nemaritimetrust.org.uk to see he would say:-
Hi Peter,
It looks as if though Mr Renwick has lost the plot. Please remind him that I have owned the domain name nemaritimetrust.co.uk since we first set up the trust and that he must have been lying to the provider Tsohost, to convince them to remove its editorship from me, some time this morning.
Please also remind him, if you take time to respond to his false accusations, that it not the sort of conduct one expects from the Chairman of a Trust.
All the best,
Mick
Peter had refuted charges made by Mr Renwick saying: “I utterly refute any suggestion that my actions have been improper”, and notice that Mr K Lund is also using the @nemaritimetrust.org.uk email address but it was neither Mr Renwick nor Mr Lund who responded to Peter’s email. It was Mr K Barnard who delivered the next personal attack on Peter:-
Once more I find your attitude towards NEMT and it’s board together with your statement of how far you are willing to go to attain your own ambitions unacceptable.
It was becoming clear that the NEMT board, presumably under the direction of its Chair, for some reason had mounted a collective attack of the Chair of the NFHT and I leapt to his defence:-
Dear Peter,
I think I can answer to the question, posed in your response to the email from Alec Renwick, NEMT Chairperson, what has gone wrong in the last two years?
The answer is the elevation of Mr Barnard to be the director of the Charity.
I conclude my email to Mr Weightman with:-
It has never been his or their website. Nemaritimetrust.co.uk has been in my name from the time that NEMT became a charity and there is nothing Messrs Renwick and Barnard can do about it, that is, if they desire to keep the North East Maritime Trust as a charity.
Strong words and I had clearly rattled the cages of the members of NEMT who were Trustees but not those of who were also the Trustees of NFHT. Indeed, I received a comment from a very long standing member of the North East Maritime Trust, Mr P Nicholson, when he agreed with me in his reply on the subject of NEMT Latest, 3 hours later:-
Now having read Barnard’s response, presumably with the agreement of Renwick, it must be abundantly clear who is actually manipulating the NEMT board.
From my own personal experience and viewpoint I am very close to vacating my NEMT membership for similar reasons voiced by Graham Bell, former Ch Exec of the Civic Trust.
In response to Mr Nicholson’s message I sent an email to the NFHT Trustees on the 16th March 2024 to include proof to confirm that I had owned the domain name nemaritimetrust.co.uk for some time. I felt that my last quote in my email to the Trustees of of both Trusts required some back up which the copy of Nominet notice was sent to them in the afternoon of the 16th March and I finished my message with the over-optimistic note:-
I hope to be in touch with some good news before next weekend.
There was no good news because Mr K Barnard responded by shifting his personal attack from Peter to me in his response to Consider Urgent 5, with Consider Urgent No.7 where he states that I am not a member of NEMT and it appears that Mr Renwick had been using Mr Barnard to deflect attention from himself.
I have added a commentary to Consider Urgent 7 and made it a page with the rather clumsy title, Misinformation/Fraudulent Misrepresentation, as I wished it to be a permanent record of the Messrs Barnard’s and Renwick’s conduct since I lost the domain to Mr Renwick along with its associated website and was forced to recover them by having to change the provider and may I add that Daily and then TSOHost had served NEMT and myself very well until Mr Renwick thought to exclude the part that NFHT had played in the success of the North East Maritime Trust.