What Type of ship was HMS Thunder Child?

What type of ship was H.M.S. Thunder Child? The fictitious ironclad from H.G. Wells’ story: War of the Worlds.

How do you imagine her? Obviously late Victorian and because I think most of us see her without any rigging, she would probably have been built after 1871. She would have had revolving metal covered turrets and probably breech loading guns. At first, revolving turret guns were muzzle loaded. The barrels were short fat stubby casks that barely went through the turret ports. However, the Royal Navy outdated muzzle loaders after 1879 and refitted all ships with longer barrelled breech loaders. However, I wanted H.M.S. Thunder Child to have muzzle loaders, so I had to go against history a little. Well, after all, Martians never really came either, so why not take a liberty for my pastiche story of War of the Worlds’ H.M.S. Thunder Child.

The reason there were no more muzzle loaded turret guns was a terrible accident in 1879. This happened on board H.M.S. Thunderer, the sister ship of H.M.S. Devastation. The Thunderer was doing a routine gunnery exercise one day with her muzzle loading guns. These antiquated weapons were pulled inside the turrets and turned muzzle down towards the floor were holes lead down to the deck below. Here the armourers would load a charge and ram it up a gutter type contraption through the hole in the ceiling and into the waiting gun muzzle above where the gun turret crew was. Then a shell would be loaded up the same way so that shell sat on charge inside the gun barrel. The gun was then pulled back up into a firing position and wheeled forward so that the short nozzle protruded out of the turret’s gun ports. There were two cannons to each cylinder covered turret. When the guns were fired one of the barrels did not ignite, so a shell complete with charge was still in the barrel. The turret crew were none the wiser and pulled both guns back in for reloading. Of course a new charge and shell was placed on top of the old unexploded charge and shell. When the guns were wheeled forward and fired, one of the guns with two charges and two shells blew up inside the turret, killing eleven and injuring thirty five. After this, all Royal Navy ships were equipped with breech loaders, except for one – my fictitious idea of H.M.S. Thunder Child.

I imagine the fictitious Thunder Child as a ship kept out of the way and outdated because she had no refits to modernize her. So in the world of fiction, my image of H.M.S. Thunder Child is that she still had the obsolete muzzle loading guns. She was an abomination because she was built after an argument between Edward James Reed and supporters of the late Captain Cowper Phipps Coles, who was lost at sea when he was aboard his newly designed ship H.M.S. Captain. The ship with revolving turrets and rigging had sunk in 1870 with great loss of life. Her freeboard had been designed to be only eight feet above the water level, but due to construction mistakes with added weight, the finished ship floated another fourteen inches lower – under seven feet. During a storm she capsized and Captain Cowper Phipps Coles perished with many others.

Edward James Reed used the turret design on H.M.S. Devastation and the sister ship Thunderer. I wanted to pretend that Thunder Child was an accidental design that went ahead when it should not have because of a squabble between both camps. When it was done – the ship was put in obscure locations and by 1898 it was going to be scrapped. It had missed out on refits and was generally neglected by the admiralty. I wanted an excuse to go against history and to invent a reason why my idea of H.M.S. Thunder Child could have obsolete muzzle loading guns. I needed a historical event when one of these early ironclads went into action. Of course none in the Royal Navy ever did see action except for a few off shore bombardments around various parts of the British Empire. I think it was called Gunboat diplomacy. But now in the H.G. Wells’ Victorian Britain of Martian invaders, a muzzle loading Thunder Child can come out of the closet and fire her obsolete guns at the alien tripods.

Hooray!