by teesships » Wed Apr 29, 2015 10:59 pm
Patrick (and others)
Very, very sad to hear this bad news!
The only upside might be that the Teesside Branch will now have to expand its region to cover the whole of Yorkshire!
Plus bits of Co. Durham as at present. We will certainly welcome any Humberside members who want to join our Branch, even if you are unlikely to make any of our meetings.
The downside is that Teesside and several other WSS branches may face exactly the same predicament before too long!
Although currently we are more than financially viable, and still have a reasonable base of WSS members in addition to a greater number of Associate (non-WSS) members we, too, have only about 12 regular attenders at our Middlesbrough meetings, with a similar number (but some being different people) for our less frequent Hartlepool meetings.
Three of these regulars are in their 90s, and we on the committee are approaching age 70 years, or have passed it (with no sign of younger blood appearing!), so ten (or less) years from now .....????
Ah, well, we'll just have to keep posting historic stuff to NEM when we get too old to chase ships ..... or attend meetings!
In the meantime, wishing all Humberside members well with their continuing interests in ships, and with gratitude that their Branch has been in existence for quite a bit longer than we at Teesside.
Ron (and, yes, I'm Chairman/Treasurer of the Teesside Branch!)