HMS Thunder Child around the "Thunder Child". The player is placed in control of the ironclad itself and must sail it down a river while using its cannons to destroy Martian units and settlements; the level ends in a climactic confrontation with the Tempest, a powerful Martian war machine. The only version to feature "Thunder Child" directly is the low-budget, direct-to-DVD Pendragon adaptation, released in 2005. This version uses poorly executed CGI to portray "Thunder Child" as a "Havock"-class destroyer; it reverses the order of the ship's attack, using its guns first before successfully ramming in both cases. The vessel eventually sinks from
HMS Thunder Child appearing as a typical pre-dreadnought battleship of the era. The real torpedo ram HMS "Polyphemus" was fast, heavily armoured for her size, and capable of operating in shallow coastal waters; her hull was low in the water with a raft-like superstructure mounting six 1-inch Nordenfelt guns, again very much unlike a pre-dreadnought battleship. In Wells' original novel the battle takes place off the mouth of the River Blackwater, Essex, where internally displaced persons 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