Is HMDS Tordenskjold the real HMS Thunder Child?

One of the most memorable moments in H G Wells’ book WAR OF THE WORLDS is when the HMS Thunder Child defends a ship that is leaving England for the European mainland from an attack by several Martian tripods. In the book she is described as a ‘ram’ … but at the time the Royal Navy only had a single ship of that type in service. It was HMS Polyphemus and she had been built in 1881.

In the book – which was published in full in 1898 – H G Wells writes the following:

About a couple of miles out lay an ironclad, very low in the water, almost ... like a water-logged ship. … It was the torpedo ram, Thunder Child ...

This certainly resembles a description of HMS Polyphemus …

HMS Polyphemus.

A plan view of HMS Polyphemus.

HMS Polyphemus in action during an exercise, breaking through a defence boom at Bantry Bay.

… but the ship actually destroys a tripod with its gun … and the Polyphemus's largest gun was a 1-inch multi-barrelled, quick-firing Nordenfelt gun which would have done very little damage to a tripod.

A 1-inch Nordenfelt multi-barrelled, quick-firing gun.

However, there was a torpedo ram in existence at the time that does resemble the description, the Danish warship HMDS Tordenskjold (which translates as Thunder Shield).

A model of HMDS Tordenskjold.

A plan view of HMDS Tordenskjold.

A port side view of HMDS Tordenskjold.

A starboard side view of HMDS Tordenskjold.

A starboard side view of HMDS Tordenskjold.

She was armed with a 14-inch gun, four 4.7-inch guns, four 37mm/1.5-inch quick-firing, multi-barrel, revolving Hotchkiss guns, a 15-inch torpedo tube in the bow, and three 13.8-inch torpedo tubes. The Tordenskjold was built between 1879 and 1882 and withdrawn from service and scrapped in 1908.

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The Tordenskjold's main gun was a Krupp-manufactured 35.5cm Mantel Ring Kanone L/25. It was one of seven built for Denmark, the other six being used to arm coastal defence fortresses at Copenhagen.

A 35.5cm Mantel Ring Kanone L/25 on a test mounting at Krupp's artillery range at Meppen.

The gun's characteristics were as follows:

• Barrel calibre: 35.5cm (14-inch)
• Barrel length: 8.88m (34ft 11.5inches)
• Bore length: 7.77m (30ft 0.5inches)
• Barrel weight: 52,000kg (51.17tons)
• Breech: Horizontal sliding wedge
• Muzzle velocity: 496m/sec (1,627 ft/sec)
• Shells:
• 525kg (1157lbs) (containing a 12.6kg (27.7lbs) explosive charge)
• 525kg (1157lbs) (containing a 6kg (13.2lbs) explosive charge)
• 444kg (979lbs) (containing a 23.4kg (51.6lbs) explosive charge)

It is interesting to note that the Royal Navy's nearest equivalent gun to the 35.5cm Mantel Ring Kanone L/25 was the Breech Loading (BL) 13.5-inch Mk I L/30 naval gun (AKA 'the 67-ton gun'). It and the following (and similar) BL 13.5-inch Mk II, III, and IV guns were used to arm four of the Admiral-class battleships, the two Trafalgar-class battleships, and the eight Royal Sovereign-class battleships. A single Mk III gun was also mounted on a disappearing carriage and emplaced as a coast defence gun at Penlee Battery, Plymouth.

The gun was also sold to the Italians and used to arm the three Re Umberto-class battleships.

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A slightly edited version of the battle between the Thunder Child and the Martians follows:

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.

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.

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.

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.