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 ironclads of the main Channel Fleet 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 artefact competing with the Martian fighting-machines on anything like equal terms. In the novel the episode concerning HMS "Thunder Child" is in "Chapter Seventeen: The 'Thunder Child'", ending "Book One: The Coming of the Martians". HMS "Thunder Child" is commonly omitted from adaptations or replaced with technology more appropriate to the updated setting. In Orson Welles's famous 1938