How do you explain to a Girl why the "Thunderchild" track makes Men cry?

[Dis86]

He specifically stated "It was the torpedo ram, Thunder Child, steaming headlong".

There was only 1 torpedo ram in the Royal Navy at the time.

 

[Snookums]

I remember this whole album when my Dad used to play it all the time. Surprisingly still don't mind it all.

 

[Housey]

He specifically stated "It was the torpedo ram, Thunder Child, steaming headlong".

There was only 1 torpedo ram in the Royal Navy at the time.

He specifically mentioned many contradictory things, as I said....

About a couple of miles out lay an ironclad, very low in the water, almost, to my brother's perception, like a waterlogged ship. This was the ram Thunder Child. It was the only warship in sight, but far away to the right over the smooth surface of the sea--for that day there was a dead calm--lay a serpent of black smoke to mark the next ironclads of the Channel Fleet, which hovered in an extended line, steam up and ready for action, across the Thames estuary during the course of the Martian conquest, vigilant and yet powerless to prevent it.

At the sight of the sea, Mrs. Elphinstone, in spite of the assurances of her sister-in-law, gave way to panic. She had never been out of England before, she would rather die than trust herself friendless in a foreign country, and so forth. She seemed, poor woman, to imagine that the French and the Martians might prove very similar. She had been growing increasingly hysterical, fearful, and depressed during the two days' journeyings. Her great idea was to return to Stanmore. Things had been always well and safe at Stanmore. They would find George at Stanmore.

It was with the greatest difficulty they could get her down to the beach, where presently my brother succeeded in attracting the attention of some men on a paddle steamer from the Thames. They sent a boat and drove a bargain for thirty-six pounds for the three. The steamer was going, these men said, to Ostend.

It was about two o'clock when my brother, having paid their fares at the gangway, found himself safely aboard the steamboat with his charges. There was food aboard, albeit at exorbitant prices, and the three of them contrived to eat a meal on one of the seats forward.

There were already a couple of score of passengers aboard, some of whom had expended their last money in securing a passage, but the captain lay off the Blackwater until five in the afternoon, picking up passengers until the seated decks were even dangerously crowded. He would probably have remained longer had it not been for the sound of guns that began about that hour in the south. As if in answer, the ironclad seaward fired a small gun and hoisted a string of flags. A jet of smoke sprang out of her funnels.

Some of the passengers were of opinion that this firing came from Shoeburyness, until it was noticed that it was growing louder. At the same time, far away in the southeast the masts and upperworks of three ironclads rose one after the other out of the sea, beneath clouds of black smoke. But my brother's attention speedily reverted to the distant firing in the south. He fancied he saw a column of smoke rising out of the distant grey haze.

The little steamer was already flapping her way eastward of the big crescent of shipping, and the low Essex coast was growing blue and hazy, when a Martian appeared, small and faint in the remote distance, advancing along the muddy coast from the direction of Foulness. At that the captain on the bridge swore at the top of his voice with fear and anger at his own delay, and the paddles seemed infected with his terror. Every soul aboard stood at the bulwarks or on the seats of the steamer and stared at that distant shape, higher than the trees or church towers inland, and advancing with a leisurely parody of a human stride.

It was the first Martian my brother had seen, and he stood, more amazed than terrified, watching this Titan advancing deliberately towards the shipping, wading farther and farther into the water as the coast fell away. Then, far away beyond the Crouch, came another, striding over some stunted trees, and then yet another, still farther off, wading deeply through a shiny mudflat that seemed to hang halfway up between sea and sky. They were all stalking seaward, as if to intercept the escape of the multitudinous vessels that were crowded between Foulness and the Naze. In spite of the throbbing exertions of the engines of the little paddleboat, and the pouring foam that her wheels flung behind her, she receded with terrifying slowness from this ominous advance.

Glancing northwestward, my brother saw the large crescent of shipping already writhing with the approaching terror; one ship passing behind another, another coming round from broadside to end on, steamships whistling and giving off volumes of steam, sails being let out, launches rushing hither and thither. He was so fascinated by this and by the creeping danger away to the left that he had no eyes for anything seaward. And then a swift movement of the steamboat (she had suddenly come round to avoid being run down) flung him headlong from the seat upon which he was standing. There was a shouting all about him, a trampling of feet, and a cheer that seemed to be answered faintly. The steamboat lurched and rolled him over upon his hands.

He sprang to his feet and saw to starboard, and not a hundred yards from their heeling, pitching boat, a vast iron bulk like the blade of a plough tearing through the water, tossing it on either side in huge waves of foam that leaped towards the steamer, flinging her paddles helplessly in the air, and then sucking her deck down almost to the waterline.

A douche of spray blinded my brother for a moment. When his eyes were clear again he saw the monster had passed and was rushing landward. Big iron upperworks rose out of this headlong structure, and from that twin funnels projected and spat a smoking blast shot with fire. It was the torpedo ram, Thunder Child, steaming headlong, coming to the rescue of the threatened shipping.

Keeping his footing on the heaving deck by clutching the bulwarks, my brother looked past this charging leviathan at the Martians again, and he saw the three of them now close together, and standing so far out to sea that their tripod supports were almost entirely submerged. Thus sunken, and seen in remote perspective, they appeared far less formidable than the huge iron bulk in whose wake the steamer was pitching so helplessly. It would seem they were regarding this new antagonist with astonishment. To their intelligence, it may be, the giant was even such another as themselves. The Thunder Child fired no gun, but simply drove full speed towards them. It was probably her not firing that enabled her to get so near the enemy as she did. They did not know what to make of her. One shell, and they would have sent her to the bottom forthwith with the Heat-Ray.

She was steaming at such a pace that in a minute she seemed halfway between the steamboat and the Martians--a diminishing black bulk against the receding horizontal expanse of the Essex coast.

Suddenly the foremost Martian lowered his tube and discharged a canister of the black gas at the ironclad. It hit her larboard side and glanced off in an inky jet that rolled away to seaward, an unfolding torrent of Black Smoke, from which the ironclad drove clear. To the watchers from the steamer, low in the water and with the sun in their eyes, it seemed as though she were already among the Martians.

They saw the gaunt figures separating and rising out of the water as they retreated shoreward, and one of them raised the camera-like generator of the Heat-Ray. He held it pointing obliquely downward, and a bank of steam sprang from the water at its touch. It must have driven through the iron of the ship's side like a white-hot iron rod through paper.

A flicker of flame went up through the rising steam, and then the Martian reeled and staggered. In another moment he was cut down, and a great body of water and steam shot high in the air. The guns of the Thunder Child sounded through the reek, going off one after the other, and one shot splashed the water high close by the steamer, ricocheted towards the other flying ships to the north, and smashed a smack to matchwood.

But no one heeded that very much. At the sight of the Martian's collapse the captain on the bridge yelled inarticulately, and all the crowding passengers on the steamer's stern shouted together. And then they yelled again. For, surging out beyond the white tumult, drove something long and black, the flames streaming from its middle parts, its ventilators and funnels spouting fire.

She was alive still; the steering gear, it seems, was intact and her engines working. She headed straight for a second Martian, and was within a hundred yards of him when the Heat-Ray came to bear. Then with a violent thud, a blinding flash, her decks, her funnels, leaped upward. The Martian staggered with the violence of her explosion, and in another moment the flaming wreckage, still driving forward with the impetus of its pace, had struck him and crumpled him up like a thing of cardboard. My brother shouted involuntarily. A boiling tumult of steam hid everything again.

"Two!," yelled the captain.

Everyone was shouting. The whole steamer from end to end rang with frantic cheering that was taken up first by one and then by all in the crowding multitude of ships and boats that was driving out to sea.

The steam hung upon the water for many minutes, hiding the third Martian and the coast altogether. And all this time the boat was paddling steadily out to sea and away from the fight; and when at last the confusion cleared, the drifting bank of black vapour intervened, and nothing of the Thunder Child could be made out, nor could the third Martian be seen. But the ironclads to seaward were now quite close and standing in towards shore past the steamboat.

 

[Housey]

Canopus, you can see how ramming bows form part of many designs back then and he talks ironclad, multiple ships of similar class and duel funnels, common of pre-dreadnoughts and 'fleets' and multiple guns all of which suggest that clinging on to the fact he mentions a torpedo bow is frankly irrelevant to identifying that he had a specific ship in mind...

 

[DampCat]

It's when he says "The steamer" and "Ironclad" that i assumed it was unarmed, i pictured this:

I know that's a japanese ship but i assumed the design wasn't limited to Japan.

Interesting to see how people are reading in to it though!

 

[Lopéz]

It's when he says "The steamer"

The steamer isn't Thunderchild. The steamer is the passenger boat full of people trying to escape. Thunderchild clears a path for the steamer. Make more sense now?

 

[Dis86]

Canopus, you can see how ramming bows form part of many designs back then and he talks ironclad, multiple ships of similar class and duel funnels, common of pre-dreadnoughts and 'fleets' and multiple guns all of which suggest that clinging on to the fact he mentions a torpedo bow is frankly irrelevant to identifying that he had a specific ship in mind...

He mentions a torpedo ram. Not bow. A torpedo ram is a very specific type of ship. One which features forward firing torpedo tubes - one of which is frequently located centrally in the ram as was the case with the Polyphemus and the USS Intrepid.
These vessels are normally very low in profile since they don't have gun batteries and are typically fast. All aspects shared with the Thunderchild.
Again I reiterate that Polyphemus was the only Torpedo Ram in the RN at the time and had minimal armament other than her torpedos.

 

[DampCat]

The steamer isn't Thunderchild. The steamer is the passenger boat full of people trying to escape. Thunderchild clears a path for the steamer. Make more sense now?

...


Yes.

 

[Housey]

He mentions a torpedo ram. Not bow. A torpedo ram is a very specific type of ship. One which features forward firing torpedo tubes - one of which is frequently located centrally in the ram as was the case with the Polyphemus and the USS Intrepid.
These vessels are normally very low in profile since they don't have gun batteries and are typically fast. All aspects shared with the Thunderchild.
Again I reiterate that Polyphemus was the only Torpedo Ram in the RN at the time and had minimal armament other than her torpedos.

I am well aware as I suggest unlike you I am not referring to Wiki for my insight on naval history, it is one of my passions. I think you also need to slow down and stop referring to your singular point. There are other things he implies that would not be associated with Polyphemus. You need to do some research on Pre Dreadnoughts also to look how their freeboards changed as they evolved. Early versions had incredibly small freeboards, to the extent they were not great sea boats.

It is a work of fiction, Thunderchild is an amalgam of many things it is VERY obvious if you read the text and trying to suggest it is simply a renamed Polyphemus is wrong, for it isn't.

 

[Dj_Jestar]

The HMS Canopus was a battleship. No chance in hell they would ever dream of using it for ramming unless they wanted to scuttle it to prevent the enemy capturing it. That bow design was just a wave breaker.

Torpedo rams were designed for ramming, with a big lump of explosives on the end of a stick fastened to their bow (in crude terms). As self-propelled torpedoes came into production this type of vessel became redundant.

 

[Housey]

The HMS Canopus was a battleship. No chance in hell they would ever dream of using it for ramming unless they wanted to scuttle it to prevent the enemy capturing it. That bow design was just a wave breaker.

Torpedo rams were designed for ramming, with a big lump of explosives on the end of a stick fastened to their bow (in crude terms). As self-propelled torpedoes came into production this type of vessel became redundant.

Not true. Ramming was still a tactic used in WW1 and WW2 for submarines. Many in the admiralty believed ramming bows should form part of construction, but most didn't and they didn't in all reality ever see it as a main weapon as the big gun and torpedo were the prime weapons of late 19th century. It should be born in mind that Dreadnought herself sank a submarine in WW1 via ramming it and there were instances across both world wars where ships rammed submarines. I am well aware of the differences, my point was most aren't and could easily view the bow of Canopus in that way.

 

[Dis86]

So basically Housey what you're saying is the Torpedo Ram Thunderchild is not based greatly on the only Torpedo Ram in use at the time and is infact based more on a vessel that wasn't even built until after War of the Worlds was written?

 

[Housey]

This is worth a read to understand the evolution of naval history from Ironclad to Dreadnought. It is one of over 50 books I own on the subject, much to my wife annoyance.

 

[Housey]

So basically Housey what you're saying is the Torpedo Ram Thunderchild is not based greatly on the only Torpedo Ram in use at the time and is infact based more on a vessel that wasn't even built until after War of the Worlds was written?

Not what I said at all. I am not saying Canopus was in Wells mind at all, I used it as the basis of the ship used on the album. I think you need to read what I said again as it's all there. You seem to be adamant that Polyphemus was the only ship he had in mind, ignoring the fact he refers to 2 funnels which it never had and as I said, other things. To be clear AGIAN. I say it was an amalgam of several ships, it is a work of fiction.

 

[rubberduck]

Finally got round to watching the 2005 version of war of the worlds (featuring Tom Cruise) - which has been on my IMDB watch list for a VERY long time - and was not moved in the slightest.... Unfortunately I am unable to relate to the OP on this topic.