Hi this is for Freddie,

Freddie, when the boat was shipwrecked it still owed mostly the original mortgaged sum of £750.000 or maybe dollars.
Various people fancifully claimed that they owned the ship. I remember sitting in reception at Dover Harbour Board awaiting a meeting with the boss where I intended to do some grovelling. The receptionist took a call and I could hear the bellowing voice of John Burch making his own claim.

I imagine that someone from MRK Marine Finance did come to take a look,concluding correctly that the ship had no value but was a liability. This may have helped the top man at Dover, Captain Peter White to agree a hugely reduced salvage fee that we paid in instalments. We had many reasons thereafter to be grateful to Captain White. Thus we were given control of the boat but we did not own it. For years we juggled that the ship should not become an asset in case a creditor came and took it.
Remember that nobody actually asked us to pay the ongoing costs and carry out repairs and deliver new equipment.
The dreadful Chris England regularly raised this status, describing us as squatters.
In 2006 I tried to have Ronan come clean about the charges and distraints there may be on the ship. Of course he would tell me nothing but turned the conversation to an accusation that the volunteer worksers who ought to be grateful to him for permitting them to play what he called ' their anorak games ', were not properly looking after the vessel. THen he tried to arrange that 50% of the donated income should go in to a private account in Lichtenstein to his benefit.

I declined this and any such friendship as we may have had up to the point, or that I imagined we had, ended there.

The debt was still outstanding in 2012 but MRK was then absorbed in to another company that then went in to liquidation. The debt died with that action.

PM.