HMS Thunder Child
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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.
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[edit] 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."
Warships armed with rams at this time were not uncommon. The only torpedo ram (a specialised ramship) ever commissioned in the Royal Navy was Polyphemus, a unique design (low hull with a lightly-armoured turtle-back, a battery of submerged torpedo tubes (which she was the trials vessel for) and a ram-prow), with no sister ships, she may have been some inspiration for the description of Thunder Child. In Jeff Wayne's musical adaptation, the ship is described as an ironclad rather than a torpedo ram; the album cover illustration of Thunder Child clearly resembles a pre-dreadnought battleship such as the Canopus-class vessel HMS Ocean.[citation needed] 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.
Due to the ambiguity of the text and the common nature of the ram feature on warships of the time and later (ram tactics were even used during WWII, HMS Glowworm (H92)) it is impossible to arrive at a definitive realistic analogue.
[edit] The Battle
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.
(Note that contrary to popular misconception (and reproduced in Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds), this battle did not occur in the Thames estuary, which had been rendered untenable, but off the mouth of the River Blackwater, Essex.)
Three Martian tripod fighting-machines then decided to approach the area 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 stated that since her guns remaind 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, who were unfamiliar with large warships (considering that no large bodies of water exist upon Mars), 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 the 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, the 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.
[edit] Aftermath
The attack by the 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. (Note: In the Jeff Wayne's musical adaptation of The War of the Worlds HMS Thunder Child sail at full speed toward the martians and opens fire with her main deck guns at about 500 yards out. The captain wanted to get very close to the martians to not only protect the civilian ships but to also increase the amount of damage that the guns would inflict on the enemy. When the smoke cleared, two Martian fighting-machines had collapsed in flames and were destroyed. The Thunder Child herself was sunk by the third martian's heat ray. The smoke attacks by the first two martians had failed to sink Thunder Child but had caused minor damage. Ultimately the Thunder Child destroyed two enemy fighting machines and was literally melted beneath the waves by the last fighting machine.)
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.
[edit] 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 the ship 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.
[edit] In other adaptations
Of the various adaptations and updates only the Jeff Wayne musical and the Pendragon film adaptation, both of which play out in the novel's depicted period, feature the ship.
In H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds by Pendragon Pictures, the Thunder Child ironclad design was used from the torpedo boat destroyer, HMS Ranger/Havock rather than using the designs of HMS Polyphemus. During the film, the ironclad has no crew members present either on deck or the turrets when they are fired, only 2 shots from the film show signs of a crew. When the ship is first seen in the film, there are other ironclads that are similar to the Thunder Child except are smaller and have an extra funnel (once again with no sign of any of the crew). At the start of the battle, the Thunder Child speeds forward, narrowly missing a tripod machine. Once the ship is clear, the other tripod machine blasts a hole in the side of the ironclad. Despite the damage, the ship speeds on, firing its cannons at the nearby tripod machine which successfully hits the hood with Martian inside causing the tripod to collapse into the sea. The ironclad (with the damage from earlier absent) charges at full speed towards one of the other tripods, which notices the sightings of the other ironclad ships in the distance. The Martian is caught by the surprise of the speeding ironclad, is hit and shatters into pieces. With the damage on the front bow of the ship (as well as the damage from earlier on returned) results in the ship sinking. Nothing else is shown of the third tripod or the other ironclads.
Other adaptations are set later and feature human war technology of the time. 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. In Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds American military forces (using tanks and helicopters, which were introduced within the past few decades) try to hold back the aliens' tripods so refugees in their path can make it to safety. (The film also features a scene in which the invaders aim for a refugee boat, that may have some basis in the Thunder Child chapter; however, as it lacks any defence, it 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.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- The War of the Worlds, available at Project Gutenberg.
- Stats (some used here) and a sketch of Thunder Child based on Polyphemus
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