HMS Polyphemus (1881) HMS Polyphemus (1881) The third HMS "Polyphemus" was a Royal Navy torpedo ram, serving from 1881 until 1903. A shallow-draft, fast, low-profile vessel, she was designed to penetrate enemy harbours at speed and sink anchored ships. Designed by Nathaniel Barnaby primarily as a protected torpedo boat, the ram was provided very much as secondary armament. It has been suggested that H. G. Wells’ fictional HMS "Thunder Child" from his novel "The War of the Worlds" may have been based on this ship, in part because he described "Thunder Child" as an ironclad torpedo ram, and "Polyphemus" was the only ship
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