A dramatic scene of alien tripod fighting machines with green heat rays attacking British battleships on a stormy sea, with explosions and smoke.

About a couple of miles out lay an ironclad, very low in the water, almost, to my brother's perception, like a water-logged ship. This was the ram Thunder Child t was the torpedo ram, Thunder Child, steaming headlong, coming to the rescue of the threatened shipping. The battle takes place off the mouth of the River Blackwater, Essex, where people from London are escaping the Martian offensive by sea. Three Martian fighting-machines having approached the vessels from the seaward side. HMS Thunder Child signals to the main fleet and steams at full speed towards the Martians without firing. The Martians, whom the narrator suggests are unfamiliar with large warships (having come from an arid planet) at first use only a gas attack. When this fails to have any effect, they employ their Heat-Ray, inflicting fatal damage on the Thunder Child. The ship continues to attack, bringing down one of the fighting machines with its gun, even as it succumbs. The flaming wreckage of the ironclad finally rams into a second fighting-machine, destroying it. When the black smoke and super-heated steam banks dissipate, both the Thunder Child and the third fighting-machine are gone. The attack by Thunder Child occupies the Martians long enough for three Royal Navy warships of the main Channel Fleet to arrive See more