Thunder Child
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HMS Thunder Child is the name of a fictional steamship that is supposed to save the people of London from the attacking Martians in the 1898 novel The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells. Thunder Child is sunk after ramming a wading Martian tripod, the wreckage of the ship then colliding with another tripod, destroying it, and with it, mankind's last line of defence against the Martian invaders. However, its efforts allow other ships to make it to safety.
Wells gives only a rough description of the ship, describing her as an ironclad torpedo ram (a predecessor to the modern battleship). The only torpedo ram in the Royal Navy was Polyphemus, a unique design with no sister ships, that may have inspired the description of Thunder Child.
A song entitled "Thunder Child" in Jeff Wayne's musical version of the book is dedicated to the drama of this scene. Cover art of the album depicts the ship in combat with tripods. The artwork of the ship appears to be based on an artist's impression of the Battle of Coronel (1 November 1914), in which the two outdated British ironclads, Good Hope and Monmouth were ambushed and sunk with all hands off the coast of Chile by a German fleet of five modern cruisers commanded by Admiral Maximilian von Spee.
In the Star Trek fictional universe, an Akira class starship is named in honour of Wells' fictional ship.