HMS Thunder Child - Historical Basis

Historical Basis

Torpedo rams were constructed in the 1870s and 1880s after the ramming and sinking of the Re d'Italia at the Battle of Lissa in 1866 by the Austrian flagship, Ferdinand Max. Despite the Italian warship being stationary at the time, the successful attack influenced naval thinking for the next few decades.

The result was specially-designed low profile, fast, armoured vessels that could attack with a ram and/or torpedoes — in practice one or other of these weapons might be absent. They were intended for use in situations where it was possible to approach an enemy ship without being sunk, for example at night or in poor visibility, or where the enemy ship was stationary, disabled or lacked fire support from nearby ships.As late as 1896 the United States commissioned a ship whose only effective weapon was a ram, the harbour-defence ram USS Katahdin.

But very few torpedo rams were built by the world's navies. The Royal Navy's only example was HMS Polyphemus which entered service in 1882. Its primary armament was torpedoes, with four side-firing tubes and one forward-firing tube in the centre of the bow-mounted ram, like the eye of a Cyclops — hence the ship's name, after Polyphemus. The ram was fitted in case the then-novel underwater torpedo tubes failed to operate properly. After the ship successfully destroyed a harbour defence boom with her ram in 1885, the Royal Navy ordered two further ships of this class. However, neither ship was built, probably because the development of quick-firing traversing guns made these vessels vulnerable as they closed for attack.