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 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 site and it took place before long before the two Trusts were forced apart by unequal division of a 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site and discovered by reading its last post, which was more suited to social media than a sensible website, that I had been replaced by the Chairman of the North East Maritime Trust, Mr Alec Renwick.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 the history of the two trusts from 2005 to about 2019 and it was replaced almost exclusively, by the history of the restoration a life boat, the Henry Frederick Swan.
TSOHost could have easily reversed the switch of the controller, called a super-admin in the package used to upload the pages and posts as seen by the public but said that the argument about who owned the domain name should be resolved between us 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 believing that old service provider would keep data from the site for a while.
At the height of my dispute about the ownership of the domain name nemaritimetrust.co.uk in April 2024, the Chairman of NEMT claimed to have written to Nominet on April 12th 2024 that I had stolen the domain name nemaritimetrust.co.uk from them:
For the attention of Nominet. After some considerable investigation it is now apparent that our nemaritimetrust.co.uk website has been stolen and transferred to Nominet from our hosting company
If Nominet had responded to the Mr Renwick’s email they will have told him that the domain name, nemaritimetrust.co.uk, did not belong to him but to a Mr Dawson of Amble and what its owner did with it was entirely up to him and not up to anyone else.
A day later he forwarded the email with the claim that I had stolen the domain from them, to the Trustees of NFHT of which I was one, and it was then that I was asked to stand down as one of their Trustees, which I did willingly on the 17th April and I was also asked to remove the link between NFHT and NEMT which if one thinks about it, was not realistically possible.
The Chairman of NEMT appeared to have dropped the line the website had been stolen in his newsletter of June 5th and replaced it with the lie that the website was offline.
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 Please also note our new email – info@nemaritimetrust.org.uk will soon be available on the website and we hope it will also be much more reliable than before.
When he claimed in his newsletter that ‘our’ website is currently offline he was lying because parts of it had been saved from the detail found on other sites and been stored in a temporary location, while the main site was being reconstructed in its new home. By the time that the NEMT newsletter was published nemaritimetrust.co.uk had become well established in its new home with IONOS.
Once this horrible little gremlin has been removed is open to interpretation and did bode well for either the nemaritimetrust.co.uk or myself and there is a critical analysis of it but I could not resist chiding Mr Renwick and wrote on 7th June knowing full well that he had removed most of the history of the two charities from the website for the five years from 2014:
Alec,
Thank you for the sight of the latest Newsletter and this is to let you know that the horrible little gremlin has been removed but he left such a mess behind that it will take me a while to recover nemaritimetrust.co.uk and any help you can give to cover the five years from 2014 to August 2019 would be appreciated.
Cheers
Michael
I had simply removed the horrible little gremlin by transferring the site to IONOS where he was not in charge but it he still did not realise that in calling me for the theft of the website he was hiding the fact that he had gained control of the old site by telling lies to someone in TSOHost and I thought that would be the end of the row and I could progress peacefully with reconstruction of nemaritimetrust.co.uk but I was wrong.
In email from Mr Renwick on the 18th June to the remaining Trustees of the NFHT and some members of NEMT, including myself he had reverted to calling me a thief:-
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.damage both NFHT and NEMT organisations. I have tried to speak to Mick recently, only to be told “I should know why”
Well, I don’t!
He was told by me when he interrupted a conversation about the damaged slipway to say that if he wanted a word with me, to put it what he wanted to say in writing, thus elevating any slander to a libel but what is most disturbing is that concludes his email with a threat:-
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.
What Mr Renwick did not know was that I had resigned my trusteeship of NFHT in April, and it had been accepted, expressly to dissociate the NFHT from any argument about the ownership of the domain name nemaritimetrust.co.uk.
Also he would not have known that TSOHost had written to me, on the 13th June 2024, advising me about an upgrade of two websites of mine for which they had been providing service and support for many years and they were theharbourview.co.uk and nemaritimetrust.co.uk.
With regard to nemaritimetrust.co.uk have TSOHost also said:
To ensure that your website remains active while you’re making these updates to your DNS records, we will use a proxy to redirect to your new hosting package.
While I’m negotiating with TSOHost about the safest way to view nemaritimetrust.co.uk as it was, prior to mid March 2024, I suggest that the Chairman of NEMT climbs down off his high horse, gives up his quest to steal the domain nemaritimetrust.co.uk from me and talk sensibly to the trustees of the Northumbrian Fisheries Heritage Trust about the best way to keep the fleet of vessels lovingly restored by members of both Trusts, in safe hands.
M Dawson
24-Jun-24