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Sacrifice of HMS Thunder Child
Part of The War of the Worlds
The site of the Martians' attack on "the multitudinous vessels that were crowded between Foulness and the Naze."
Depictions
The War of the Worlds (1898) by H. G. Wells
Canon information
Date June, "early in the twentieth century" (precise date unknown); Day 6 of the Martian invasion Location Mouth of the River Blackwater, Essex Result Marginal British Victory, refugee vessels escape
Belligerents
United Kingdom	Martians
Commanders
Unknown  †	None
Strength
1 Ironclad torpedo ram (Thunder Child)	3 Martian war machines
Casualties
Thunder Child lost	2 war machines destroyed, fate of third unknown

HMS Thunder Child is the name of the fictional ironclad torpedo ram of the Royal Navy that is destroyed by Martian fighting-machines in H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds. It sacrificed itself to allow refugee vessels escape.

Description

In the novel, Wells gives only a rough description of the ship, describing her thus: “About a couple of miles out lay an ironclad, 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 said that "It was the torpedo ram, Thunder Child, steaming headlong, coming to the rescue of the threatened shipping."

The Italian Re d'Italia had been rammed and sunk by the Austrian flagship, Ferdinand Max, at the Battle of Lissa in 1866, and ramming dominated naval thinking for the next twenty years. As late as 1896 the United States commissioned a ship whose only effective weapon was a ram, the harbour-defence ram USS Katahdin.^[1]

Torpedo rams were a type of ship constructed in the 1870s and 1880s. They were low profile, fast, armoured vessels designed to attack with a ram and/or torpedoes — in practice one or other of these weapons might be absent since the term was rather loosely applied. They were intended for use in situations where it was possible to approach an enemy ship without being sunk, for example at night or in poor visibility, or where the enemy ship was stationary, disabled or lacked the fire support from other nearby ships.^[2]

Only a few of the type were built, and the Royal Navy's only example was HMS Polyphemus which entered service in 1882. Polyphemus's primary armament was her torpedoes and the ram was fitted in case the then-novel side-firing underwater torpedo tubes failed to operate properly. However in a trial in 1885 the ship successfully destroyed a harbour defence boom with her ram. The Royal Navy ordered two further ships of this class, but both were later cancelled, probably because the development of quick firing and quick traversing guns in the early 1880s made the vessels too vulnerable as they attacked.^[1]

In Jeff Wayne's musical adaptation, the ship is described as an ironclad but not specifically a ram or a torpedo ram; the album cover illustration of Thunder Child clearly resembles a pre-dreadnought battleship such as the Canopus-class vessel HMS Ocean. The ship is also depicted in art in the Classics Illustrated comic book adaptation of the novel, also appearing as a typical pre-dreadnought battleship.

The battle

A Henrique Alvim Corrêa illustration from a 1906 edition of the book.

On a Wednesday evening, immediately after the Martians conquered London and the surrounding areas, a large number of refugees attempted to escape by sea from Tillingham Bay on the Essex coast. Included in the rag-tag fleet of ships was a paddle wheel steamer laden with the main characters in the novel and other refugees from London.

In Wells' original novel the battle takes place off the mouth of the River Blackwater, Essex, whilst in Jeff Wayne's musical adaption it takes place in the Thames estuary.

Three Martian tripod fighting-machines then decided to approach the vessels from the sea. HMS Thunder Child — a torpedo ram that had been patrolling about two miles away — raced to engage them, but without firing. The novel states that since her guns remained quiet as she charged the tripods, she was not immediately seen as a threat, so she was not immediately destroyed by their Heat-Ray. In addition, the crowded and turbulent mass of refugee shipping stretching from Foulness to the Naze may have also influenced the captain's decision.

The Martians, whom the narrator suggests were unfamiliar with large warships, at first responded to Thunder Child's charge with only a gas attack, which was ineffective against the moving ship. After seeing the ship's continued advance, the Martians deployed their Heat-Ray, inflicting a great amount of damage upon Thunder Child. She was, however, able to ram one of the fighting-machines, destroying it.

In sinking condition but with steering and propulsion still functional, Thunder Child turned toward a second fighting-machine and began to use her guns. Although she appeared to score no significant hits, and one of her misses sunk a nearby fishing smack, she was able to set a collision course with one of the Martians before the Heat-Rays found her again. The resulting explosion of her boilers and ammunition magazines destroyed Thunder Child — but the thousands of tons of incandescent wreckage struck the Martian machine and destroyed it.

Aftermath

The attack by Thunder Child occupied the Martians long enough for three other Royal Navy ironclads to arrive. The fate of the third Martian fighting machine is not revealed by Wells, but the battle did enable the civilian shipping to escape.

As depicted in the book, Thunder Child is the only human artifact which can compete with the Martian fighting-machines on anything like equal terms, the battle clearly giving a morale boost to hard-pressed humanity.

Influence

A song entitled "Thunder Child" in Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds is dedicated to the drama of this scene. Cover art of the album depicts a Canopus class battleship in combat with tripods. The artwork of the ship appears to be based on an artist's impression of the Battle of Coronel (1 November 1914), in which the two outdated British armoured cruisers, Good Hope and Monmouth, were sunk with all hands off the coast of Chile by a German fleet of five modern cruisers commanded by Vizeadmiral Maximilian von Spee.

No ship of the Royal Navy has ever been named HMS Thunder Child, the closest names used being Thunderbolt and Thunderer. However, in the fictional universe where the Star Trek series takes place, a Federation Akira-class starship is named USS Thunderchild in honor of Wells' fictional ship, and fights against the Borg in Star Trek: First Contact. In the computer game, MechWarrior 4: Vengeance, the player faces a pair of destroyers during a mission, one of which is named the Thunderchild.

The monthly science fiction and fantasy webzine The Thunder Child was named in honour of this ironclad.

In the science fiction roleplaying game Traveller: the New Era (TNE), a Reformation Coalition "clipper"-class starship was named RCS Thunderchild in honor of the War of the Worlds vessel. The ship's patch, presented in the TNE sourcebook Star Vikings, shows the influence of the Jeff Wayne image of the ironclad, combined with a 19th century image of the Martian war machine. Details also appear in the TNE products Path of Tears and Reformation Coalition Equipment Guide.

A fiction book by Nick Pope concerning UFOs is named Operation: Thunder Child.

In the Mindstar Trilogy of books by Peter F. Hamilton, the central character, Greg Mandel, operated under the military callsign "Thunderchild". It seems probable that this was chosen by the author as a deliberate reference to H.G. Wells The War of the Worlds.

In other adaptations

Of the various adaptations and updates only the Jeff Wayne musical and the 2005 Pendragon film adaptation, both of which play out in the novel's depicted period, feature the ship. The Pendragon adaptation uses CGI to portray the Thunder Child as a conventional ironclad battleship, and reverses the order of the ship's attack; it uses guns first, before ramming, in both cases successfully. The vessel eventually sinks from damage sustained in the battle.

Other adaptations are set later and feature human war technology appropriate to the period. In the 1953 film the last-ditch defence is an atomic bomb which, despite being man's most incredible weapon, is as useless as every other physical attack against the invaders. Steven Spielberg's 2005 version of War of the Worlds contemporary American military forces use tanks and helicopters to try to hold back the alien tripods, again without success. The film features a scene in which the invaders attack a refugee boat, that may have some basis in the Thunder Child chapter; however, although it is unarmed, the refugee boat is not spared from destruction. Unlike Thunder Child, however, in neither re-creation is there even a temporary victory, and the war machines are not damaged, let alone destroyed, since in both films the machines have impenetrable shields that are only later bypassed in unrelated circumstances.

Another analogue of Thunder Child is the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber in Orson Welles's famous radio adaptation of The War of the Worlds, which after being critically damaged by a fighting machine's Heat-Ray, tries to crash into it.

In the comic book Scarlet Traces, a sequel set a decade after the events of the story, the ship (spelt erroneously as Thunderchild) and its efforts are remembered. One of the supporting characters is a survivor of the ship's destruction, presumably the only one who did so. There is also a monument dedicated to the ship's fight against the Martians.

In Sherlock Holmes's War of the Worlds, the first mate of the Thunder Child is said to have been the husband of Violet Hunter, from The Adventure of the Copper Beeches.

See also

• List of fictional ships

References

External links

• The War of the Worlds at Project Gutenberg
• Stats (some used here) and a sketch of Thunder Child based on Polyphemus