When I selected this image of a number of Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) vessels for upload to the My Ship Images web site, I started to wonder if there was a collective Noun that described such a grouping. Accuse me of being someone with too much time on his hands if you will, but that random thought prompted an Internet search by me into an area of the English language that I had never ever explored before. Whilst my Internet search was not exhaustive, It was sufficiently wide for me to conclude that a collective noun does not exist for a group of Lifeboats. The collective nouns for ships such as Fleet, Armada or Flotilla did not encapsulate the nature of these life-saving vessels manned by volunteer crews.

My challenge therefore was to come up with a solution that I could use as the title for my image. I considered such candidates as Response, Saviour, Service and Volunteer but eventually settled on asking my youngest grandson for his suggestion. I made the correct decision because amongst his ideas was the word Hope. For every call out there is Hope on the part of the Lifeboat's crew for a successful rescue and Hope on the part of the vessel or person in distress to be rescued.

You might disagree or even know of a word that is used by the RNLI itself, but for me Hope seems appropriate. This image of a Hope of Lifeboats was captured in June 2007 when the (5?) lifeboats were moored in the River Medina at West Cowes Isle of Wight. At the time I was on a Red Funnel car and passenger ferry that was tied up at its berth in East Cowes. I regret I am unable to identify the class of Lifeboat featured because they carried no markings.