Feb 13, 2016
HMS Polyphemus in a Malta Dockyard, 1881. As the only torpedo ram to serve in the Royal Navy, she was designed to penetrate harbours at speed, sinking ships at anchor. The central torpedo tube was fit with a steel bow cap which hinged upward - reinforced to be a ram. Interesting hydrodynamic effects were observed on this ship, being quite by accident one of the first bulbous bows.
The ship found a place in the H. G. Wells’ novel The War of the Worlds, in which one HMS Thunder Child - a torpedo ram - comes to the aid of evacuees, felling a martian tripod and damaging another.