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Post by ArmoredTrackLayer on Jan 19, 2005 20:29:21 GMT
They were actually off the coast of england. The steamer emptied out of the Thames and into the ocean.
So I hope this answers your questions.
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Post by Stewymartian on Jan 19, 2005 20:37:36 GMT
The thunderchild battle did not happen in the Thames. It took place to the north of the Thames estuary on the Essex coast, possibly on the river Blackwater. Wells mentions the narrators brother coming within sight of the sea near a place called Tillingham.
I'm not personally familiar with the area, but on the map it looks like the sort of place that could be used as a harbour for a sudden mass exodus.
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Post by TOMAHAWK on Jan 19, 2005 20:47:40 GMT
So the cover of the JW album ... would that be accurate for the TYPE of location for the battle ie just the location not anything else
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Post by maniacs on Jan 19, 2005 20:50:34 GMT
JW book does confuse the original story don't it. My advice to you is not to ask too many questions as it may well spoil your view of the album - and JW film.
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Post by Stewymartian on Jan 19, 2005 20:52:07 GMT
It wasn't the narrator who witnessed the thunderchild battle, it was his brother. Several chapters in the first part of the book are written as an account of what the narrators brother saw, not what the narrator himself saw. You have to remember that Wells wrote the book in a sort of semi-documentary style. It is supposed to have been written six years after the war, and includes information that the narrator did not know during the war, but has pieced together since.
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Post by TOMAHAWK on Jan 19, 2005 20:52:59 GMT
Sorry this thread won't make sense as I have deleted my posts cos they are crap!! ;D
Sorry peeps
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Post by Stewymartian on Jan 19, 2005 20:55:59 GMT
That explains it, I thought I was going mad
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Post by TOMAHAWK on Jan 19, 2005 21:00:47 GMT
aah but in the 1st teaser trailer - is it not the narrator (or the guy we think is the narrator saying to Miss Elphistone .. "it's the Thunderchild "or summat
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Post by maniacs on Jan 19, 2005 21:04:32 GMT
no!!! - In the first teaser trailer its not freddie. In fact the first teaset trailer gave me high hopes cause of the amount of dialogue and scenes I recognised from the book.
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Post by TOMAHAWK on Jan 19, 2005 21:16:24 GMT
Maniac u sure 'bout that , who is FREDDIE btw - i thought we didn't know the narrators name.
The women weren't present during the Thunderchild attack according to the book .. just the narrator
Now I if it is him then i think Pendragon may have got it wrong. I cannot remember if he met them before or after the attack
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Post by I own a cylinder on Jan 19, 2005 21:32:29 GMT
Its bin a while since i actually read WOTW from cover to cover but from what i can remember, it's the narrators brother who witness the ThunderChild battle from on board a steamer with Miss Elphistone and i think its her sister or her cousin or summit. The fact it seems they are not on the steamer is because Wells shifts his writing to what the narrators brother saw of the battle.
The shipping in the scene was spread out in a big creasent between the mouth of the Thames and the Wash i think. The steamer sets off from the river Blackwell and the Martian Fighting Machines cross the mud flats to intercept.
JWs is a similar sort of situation only he has the narrator make it to the coast but miss the steamer. Plus, the album cover is the right kind of setting.
BTW. Does anyone have any thoughts on what kind of battleship ThunderChild could be. Although the painting in Magnetic storm has the ship as a 'Majestic Class Battleship' i was just wunderin what other people thought??
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Post by TOMAHAWK on Jan 19, 2005 21:48:49 GMT
The consensus of opinion here seems to point to HMS Polyphemus - a torpedo ram , I did offer a torpedo boat destroyer in service at the same time called TBD Havoc which I think is a better bet but that opinion sank as fast as the Thunderchild ;D
No way battleship - JW version is wrong
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Post by Gnorn on Jan 19, 2005 22:08:10 GMT
When his brother and the two sisters reach the coast Wells describes an armada of ships, one lying very low in the water. "This was the ram Thunderchild". Mr. Hines made the brother say this remark, very clever found IMHO.
After that, he and the two sisters get on a boat and from that boat they witness the battle between Thunderchild and the Martians.
-Gnorn
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Post by malfunkshun on Jan 20, 2005 3:04:37 GMT
BTW. Does anyone have any thoughts on what kind of battleship ThunderChild could be. Although the painting in Magnetic storm has the ship as a 'Majestic Class Battleship' i was just wunderin what other people thought?? i have magnetic storm, and while there are several painting of the martians, there are no paintings of the thunderchild. there is one painting that shows the martians at sea with one in the foreground firing the heat ray and one in the background walking, this is one of only 3 scenes that depicted the martians in water... one showed a trio of martians walking out of the water onto a beach at night, and another was a view from underneath and behind a martian walking in the ocean, the only perspective shot of deans martians in that book. anywho, maybe you saw that picture in Views? i've never seen that book, but i heard there are some of deans martians in that book as well as magnetic storm.
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Post by ArmoredTrackLayer on Jan 20, 2005 4:47:18 GMT
ummm I didn't start this thread lol. Ohhhh its because you deleted the original post. ;D
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Post by jeffwaynefan on Jan 20, 2005 11:00:32 GMT
JW book does confuse the original story don't it. My advice to you is not to ask too many questions as it may well spoil your view of the album - and JW film. Not really, the album cover shows the Fighting Machine, the Thunder Child and the coast line and sea, like what's mentioned in the book. Be a bit differant if it showed the battle outside a branch of ARGOS. ;D, as humorous that would be, THAT would spoil it. H_C
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Post by McTodd on Jan 20, 2005 12:42:09 GMT
As discussed on both pages of this thread… robk.proboards13.com/index.cgi?board=book&action=display&thread=1084121997...‘Thunder Child’ is completely fictitious. Although she was inspired by ‘Polyphemus’, she was in no sense directly modelled on her. ‘Polyphemus’ was the only torpedo-ram the British built and she was smaller than Wells’ vessel. For example, the only guns ‘Polyphemus’ carried were machine guns to repel light torpedo boats; ‘Thunder Child’s’ guns are clearly larger (though not necessarily battleship-main-armament size) and fire explosive shells, otherwise she could not have ‘cut down’ a Martian and ‘smashed a smack to matchwood’ with a ricochet off the water. Also, ‘Polyphemus’ had a single funnel, whereas ‘Thunder Child’ is explicitly described as a twin-funnel vessel (and don’t try to get out of that by arguing that Wells or his brother were mistaken; if we are pretending that WotW is a memoir describing actual events, as it purports to be, then we have to recognise that Wells wrote it several years after the events described, and being a meticulous writer with a scientific background, it would have been quite easy for him to look up HMS ‘Thunder Child’ in a copy of Jane’s to get his description right). There is, consequently, little point in arguing about exactly which particular vessel ‘Thunder Child’ was based on – she’s an amalgam of the torpedo-ram ‘Polyphemus’ and, probably, a conventional ironclad ram (these were small battleships built for coast defence; they were usually stationed in major ports, and generally had very low freeboards), as ‘Thunder Child’ is also referred to on occasion as just a ram. She is definitely not a torpedo-boat or torpedo-boat destroyer (such as ‘Havoc’), as Tomahawk suggested (although I’ve criticised Wells’ knowledge of naval matters elsewhere, he definitely knew the difference between an ironclad and a torpedo-boat or TBD). Malfunkshun, I have a copy of Magnetic Storm (two, sadly – a paperback, and a hardback I picked up for pennies in a sale) and there is a double-page spread of the ‘Thunder Child’ battle. She is clearly based on a ‘Majestic’ class battleship, and the Channel Fleet is astern of her some distance off. IMHO it is a far better painting than the one used by Jeff Wayne (I also much prefer the Deans’ tripods to JF’s rather anodyne specimens).
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Post by I own a cylinder on Jan 20, 2005 15:07:25 GMT
Deans paintngs capture the very essence of the book. Most evident in the painting of the FM crossing the river thames. That actually looks like victorian london. Apparently dean did some research into creating a stable tripod.
I agree. As nice as JW machines are, sometimes they don't look stable. Interesting to wonder how they change direction, Although in the P.C. game they are shown as walking rather like gorillas.
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Post by TOMAHAWK on Jan 21, 2005 21:17:31 GMT
Er McTodd or anybody else!!! Right - Why was it DEFINATELY not a TBD destroyer These were in service at the time TO PROTECT THE CAPITAL SHIPS FROM ATTACK by torpedo boats and smaller ships, so it would make sense that one of these would have been hanging around the perifery of the channel fleet!!! These were also LOW in the water and had 3 bow mounted torp tubes , were quite fast and BEST OF ALL had a 12 pounder gun ..so it is feasable this blew the "smack to matchwood"! So these probably had more in common with a ram then say a large ironclad. I did post the full specs and pictures of the TBD havock suggest you google it and have a look.
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Post by McTodd on Jan 22, 2005 12:20:14 GMT
There are two reasons why I don't believe 'Thunder Child' to be a TBD. First, I just don't think a TBD fits the description in the book. Second, Wells knew the difference between a TBD and an ironclad - he would never have confused the two. If we look at the book (here I'll refer to the page numbering of the 1980 Pan paperback, with JW album cover) we read: 'About a couple of miles out lay an ironclad very low in the water, almost, to my brother's perception, like a waterlogged ship. This was the ram Thunder Child.' (p.115) TC is referred to as an 'ironclad', and a 'ram' - neither of which term was ever applied to a TBD. 'A douche of spray blinded my brother for a moment. When his eyes were clear again he saw the monster had passed and was rushing landward. 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.' (p.118) Note the reference to a 'torpedo-ram', not a torpedo-boat-destroyer. Early TBDs, such as 'Havock', could hardly be said to have had 'big iron upperworks' - their decks were very spartan indeed, mainly consisting of a turtle-back forecastle with a light gun atop and the funnels. A great (and very large) photo can be seen here: www.geocities.com/Pentagon/Quarters/7155/hav.jpg'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.' (p.119) Note, again, consistent use of the term 'ironclad', implying a heavy unit. Earlier, in 'What Had Happened in Surrey', Wells notes: 'Even the crews of the torpedo-boats and destroyers that had brought their quick-firers up the Thames refused to stop, mutinied, and went down again.' (p.98) He quite clearly can distinguish between an 'ironclad' and a 'destroyer' (TBD). Had 'Thunder Child' been a TBD, I'm quite sure Wells would have said so, especially as WotW is written as a memoir, so, as I have said before, he would (if it was real) have done his research and looked 'Thunder Child' up in Jane's to ensure accuracy.
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