ironclad An ironclad is a steam engine, steam-propelled warship protected by Wrought iron, iron or steel iron armor, armor plates, constructed from 1859 to the early 1890s. The ironclad was developed as a result of the vulnerability of wooden warships ...

torpedo ram A torpedo ram is a type of torpedo boat combining a ram with torpedo tubes. Incorporating design elements from the cruiser and the monitor, it was intended to provide small and inexpensive weapon systems for coastal defence and other littoral com ...

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against F ...

Martian Mars, the fourth planet from the Sun, has appeared as a setting in works of fiction since at least the mid-1600s. It became the most popular celestial object in fiction in the late 1800s as the Moon was evidently lifeless. At the time, the pred ...

H. G. Wells Herbert George Wells"Wells, H. G."
Revised 18 May 2015. ''

The War of the Worlds ''The War of the Worlds'' is a science fiction novel by English author H. G. Wells, first serialised in 1897 by ''Pearson's Magazine'' in the UK and by ''Cosmopolitan (magazine), Cosmopolitan'' magazine in the US. The novel's first appear ...

'' whilst protecting a refugee rescue fleet of civilian vessels. It has been suggested that ''Thunder Child'' was based on HMS ''Polyphemus'', which was the sole torpedo ram to see service with the Royal Navy from 1881 to 1903. However, given that ''Thunder Child'' is described by Wells as a huge ship with twin funnels and guns sufficiently powerful to destroy a Martian tripod with a single hit, it's unlikely that the diminutive single-funnelled and lightly armed ''Polyphemus'' was actually meant to be the model for the fictional ship. There's little doubt that ''Thunder Child'' was meant to be a battleship and Wells' use of the term "torpedo ram" was merely referring to the ram bows common in Victorian warships of the time.

Fictional description

In the novel Wells gives only a rough description of the ship. After the narrator talks about his brother, he introduces us to the ''Thunder Child'' in chapter 17, describing her thus: "About a couple of miles out lay an

ironclad An ironclad is a steam engine, steam-propelled warship protected by Wrought iron, iron or steel iron armor, armor plates, constructed from 1859 to the early 1890s. The ironclad was developed as a result of the vulnerability of wooden warships ...

, very low in the water, almost, to my brother's perception, like a water-logged ship. This was the ram ''Thunder Child''". A few paragraphs later, it is stated that "It was the

torpedo ram A torpedo ram is a type of torpedo boat combining a ram with torpedo tubes. Incorporating design elements from the cruiser and the monitor, it was intended to provide small and inexpensive weapon systems for coastal defence and other littoral com ...

, ''Thunder Child'', steaming headlong, coming to the rescue of the threatened shipping". The battle takes place off the mouth of the

River Blackwater, Essex The River Blackwater is a river in Essex, England. It rises as the River Pant in the northwest of the county, just east of Saffron Walden, and flows in a generally southeast direction to Bocking, near Braintree, via Great Sampford and Great Ba ...

, where people from London are escaping the Martian offensive. Three Martian fighting-machines having approached the vessels from the seaward side. HMS ''Thunder Child'' signals to the main fleet and steams at full speed towards the Martians without firing. The Martians, whom the narrator suggests are unfamiliar with large warships (having come from an arid planet) at first use only a

gas attack Chemical warfare (CW) involves using the toxic properties of chemical substances as Chemical weapon, weapons. This type of warfare is distinct from nuclear warfare, biological warfare and radiological warfare, which together make up CBRN defen ...

. When this fails to have any effect, they employ their Heat-Ray, inflicting fatal damage on the ''Thunder Child''. The ship continues to attack, bringing down one of the fighting machines with its gun, even as it succumbs. The flaming wreckage of the ironclad finally rams into a second fighting-machine, destroying it. When the black smoke and super-heated steam banks dissipate, both the ''Thunder Child'' and the third fighting-machine are gone. The attack by ''Thunder Child'' occupies the Martians long enough for three Royal Navy warships of the main

Channel Fleet The Channel Fleet and originally known as the Channel Squadron was the Royal Navy formation of warships that defended the waters of the English Channel from 1854 to 1909 and 1914 to 1915. History Throughout the course of Royal Navy's history the ...

to arrive.

Adaptations

HMS ''Thunder Child'' is commonly omitted from some adaptations or replaced outright with technology more appropriate to the updated settings. In

Orson Welles George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985) was an American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter, known for his innovative work in film, radio and theatre. He is considered to be among the greatest and most influential f ...

's famous 1938 radio adaptation of ''The War of the Worlds'', a Boeing

B-17 Flying Fortress The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress is a four-engined heavy bomber developed in the 1930s for the United States Army Air Corps (USAAC). Relatively fast and high-flying for a bomber of its era, the B-17 was used primarily in the European Theater ...

heavy bomber replaces ''Thunder Child''; it collides with a fighting-machine after being critically damaged by its Heat-Ray. In the

George Pal George Pal (born György Pál Marczincsak; ; February 1, 1908 – May 2, 1980) was a Hungarian-American animator, film director and producer, principally associated with the fantasy and science-fiction genres. He became an American citizen after ...

1953 film adaptation, the last-ditch defense against the Martians is an

atomic bomb A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb ...

dropped by a ''Thunder Child'' replacement, a Northrop YB-49 Flying Wing jet bomber; the atomic bomb proves useless, because the Martian fighting-machines are protected by individual force fields. The first adaptation to feature HMS ''Thunder Child'' was '' Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of ''The War of the Worlds'''', which was released in 1978 and retains the novel's Victorian setting, characters, and sitituations. The album features the song, "Thunder Child". The album's cover art depicts a ''Canopus''-class battleship fighting a Martian tripod. This version of ''Thunder Child'' is based upon the naval painting depicting the

Battle of Coronel The Battle of Coronel was a First World War Imperial German Navy victory over the Royal Navy on 1 November 1914, off the coast of central Chile near the city of Coronel. The East Asia Squadron (''Ostasiengeschwader'' or ''Kreuzergeschwader'') ...

(1 November 1914). ''The War of the Worlds'' was written as an account of fictional 1897 events and the lead ship of the class, HMS ''Canopus'', did not enter service until 1899. The vessel in the painting is therefore a member of the ''Majestic''-class, like HMS ''Mars'' commissioned in 1896. The 1999 video game adaptation of Jeff Wayne's musical features a level revolving around ''Thunder Child''. The player is placed in control of the ironclad and must sail it down a river while using its cannons to destroy Martian machines and settlements; the level ends in a climactic confrontation with Tempest, a powerful Martian war machine. In

Steven Spielberg Steven Allan Spielberg (; born December 18, 1946) is an American director, writer, and producer. A major figure of the New Hollywood era and pioneer of the modern blockbuster, he is the most commercially successful director of all time. Spie ...

's 2005 film adaptation, ''War of the Worlds'', contemporary American military forces use tanks and attack helicopters against the alien Tripods, again without success. Earlier in the film, civilian ferries trying to escape from the Tripods are trapped and easily sunk, with no intervention by a warship. The low-budget direct-to-DVD Pendragon feature adaptation of the novel, released in 2005, uses poor CGI to portray HMS ''Thunder Child'' as a Royal Navy . In the BBC's 2019 TV miniseries, the main characters join up again on the Essex coast, where many small boats are gathering civilians to ferry them out to anchored ships. A Martian Tripod appears and several warships open fire on it with their main batteries. Most of the warships are at quite a distance offshore, but one, which could be ''Thunder Child'', is much closer. The Tripod is hit on one its the legs and in its command

cupola In architecture, a cupola () is a relatively small, most often dome-like, tall structure on top of a building. Often used to provide a lookout or to admit light and air, it usually crowns a larger roof or dome. The word derives, via Italian, from ...

, and immediately collapses. A second Martian machine appears on the beach, chasing the protagonists. Before it can activate its Heat-Ray, it is struck by multiple naval artillery shells. It falls forward, narrowly missing crushing the protagonists. As in H.G. Wells’ original novel, the refugees manage to escape, while none of the warships are shown being destroyed by the Tripods. The 2013 science fiction novel ''The Last Days of Thunder Child'', written by C. A. Powell, is set in Victorian Britain of 1898.

Fictional description

Adaptations

See also