Showing posts with label WOTW. Show all posts

Tuesday, 30 July 2024

Torpedo Ram HMS Polyphemus

The 2,640 ton Torpedo Ram HMS Polyphemus was built in 1891/92 she had shallow-draft, fast, low-profile vessel, and was designed to penetrate enemy harbours at speed and sink anchored ships. She had a top speed of 17 knots, which was very fast for the time, to ram and sink or badly damage ships at anchor and make a quick escape.

Designed by Nathaniel Barnaby primarily as a protected torpedo boat, the ram was provided very much as secondary armament.

Even with a shallow draft of 20ft and 6inches Polyphemus was capable of making a passage in any weather from Plymouth to Gibraltar, or from Gibraltar to Malta at 10 knots without assistance. With a ships complement of 80, she was armed with 5 × 14-inch torpedo tubes and 6 × 1-inch Nordenfelt guns. One torpedo tube ran down the center of the ram. To help with manoeuvring in tight places she had bow rudders also on the ram. She was also the first Royal Navy vessel to be fitted with 80-volt electric lighting. This was adopted by the Royal Navy in 1882 following a fatal electrocution aboard HMS Inflexible, which had an 800-volt circuit.

Polyphemus launched a simulated attack on 30th of June 1885 evading around ten torpedoes fired by 6 torpedo boats during her two-mile run-in and easily smashed through the booms and a 5-inch steel hawser holding them in place. 

It has been suggested that H. G. Wells’ fictional HMS Thunder Child from his novel The War of the Worlds may have been based on this ship, in part because he described Thunder Child as an ironclad torpedo ram. When Martian invaders attack an evacuee packed ship, the ship goes to their rescue. During the intervention, the Thunder Child sacrifices herself to enable the refugee ship to escape but succeeds in destroying two alien tripods.

Polyphemus spent most of her career in the Mediterranean and was sold on July 7th 1903 and broken up. 

Despite being a successful ship, no further vessels of this design were ordered by the Royal Navy, possibly because the development of much more sophisticated ships with traversing gun turrets, rendered the design of this ship obsolete. And so, Polyphemus was the only ship of this type which the Royal Navy possessed.

The wonderful names that the British came up for their ships, shows their affinity to the classical period.  Polyphemus appears in The Odyssey of Greek mythology as a Cyclops, the son of the Greek Poseidon (equivalent to the Roman Neptune), the trident bearing sea god.

Friday, 10 November 2023

The Chances of Anything Coming from Mars...

Currently on a flying work trip through the UK, but I did get the chance to stop briefly in Woking for a homage to HG Wells. He lived in the town while writing War of the Worlds in 1895-97, using it as the setting for the initial part of the book.

The first alien cylinder lands in Horsell Common, assembling heat ray equipped machines where they impact in the sandpit

The 7 metre tall Tripod itself in the centre of town!

With a crashed cylinder and some of Mankind's bacterial allies in attendance

Nearby Wells Plaza has a nice statue of the author;

Note the martian red weed at the base of the chair, date on the back of the chair from The Time Machine (when the Traveller meets with Eloy and Morlocks) and he is holding the Cavorite sphere spaceship from The First Men in the Moon.

"The Man from Maybury Hill"; 141 Maybury Road Woking, where HG Wells lived while writing the book

Just a nice spot to enjoy a coffee and consider invasion from another world (nice product placement there Games Workshop!)

"The chances of anything coming from Mars are a Million to One they said..."

Tuesday, 12 February 2019

Back to Mars!

Good God man - has it really been a year since a dispatch was last posted? We were adrift in the Aether you know while dispatched on Her Majesty's service, but have now returned. Indeed a new VSF project beckons but I'll keep Mum for now as it develops - wouldn't want the Kaiser or the Tsar to get word of it. But it does involve Mars, Airships and gashants with a few of those new fellows down at the club providing some inspiration and opposing forces...

In the meantime, some news regarding that mysterious and boreboding planet:

The Coming of the Martians

The Coming of the Martians is our full-cast faithful audio dramatisation of H. G. Wells’ original 1897 martian invasion story The War of the Worlds.

Since it was first novelised in 1898 there have been numerous adaptations in various media formats. However, none of these derivative works have been truly faithful to the original story or the tone that Wells established.

Our adaptation, presented as an audio drama in surround sound, retains the dark and often horrific nature of events and faithfully recreates scenes as closely as possible without the need to alter the original story. We retain the late 19th Century period and the southern England setting and give the story a fantastic cast of actors wonderfully directed in a production that sounds incredibly realistic!

https://www.sherwoodsoundstudios.com/the-war-of-the-worlds/

BBC is making a Victorian-era War of the Worlds TV series

Earlier today, the BBC announced a number of new shows, including a three-part series based on H.G. Wells’ novel The War of the Worlds. The show is scheduled to go into production next spring, and it appears that, unlike most modern adaptations, it will be set in the Victorian era.

The series will be written by screenwriter Peter Harness, who adapted Susanna Clarke’s Victorian-era fantasy novel Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell for the network, as well as a handful of Doctor Who episodes. The North-West Evening Mail has some additional details, quoting Mammoth Studios Managing Director of Productions Damien Timmer as saying that while the film has been adapted many times, “no one has ever attempted to follow Wells and locate the story in Dorking at the turn of the last century.” The project was first announced in 2015, and today’s confirmation of production comes only months after the book entered the public domain.

The novel follows an unnamed narrator as he watches a series of shooting stars, which turn out to be vast metal cylinders containing Martian invaders. The aliens attack the assembled humans and begin a conquest of the planet, only to succumb to human diseases.

The War of the Worlds is one of the more important works of science fiction out there, and its period setting is important to the original story, as it’s part of an entire movement of fiction dubbed “invasion literature,” in which England is gallantly defended against hostile outsiders. It will be interesting to see how and if the series addresses the politics of the novel’s era, and how they relate to the politics of England and Europe today.Since the novel’s release in 1898, there have been a number of film, television, and radio adaptations, but with only one exception, most productions updated the novel to contemporary times and settings. The 1953 film took place in Southern California, while the 2005 Steven Spielberg adaptation was set in New York. Even the famous 1938 radio play by Orson Welles shifted the location to the United States. Only a direct-to-video adaptation called H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds retained the period setting.

https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/4/15551306/bbc-the-war-of-the-worlds-tv-series-peter-hartness

Thursday, 19 November 2015

All Quiet at Fall-In

Saw these nice AQOTMF minis at Fall-In recently. Very shiny! Loved the LED effects in particular.

Tuesday, 1 September 2015

The Anglo-Martian War of 1895

You may not have seen this upcoming release from Osprey. Looks like November will bring more WOTW goodness!

War of the Worlds

THE ANGLO-MARTIAN WAR OF 1895

DARK OSPREY 9

Author: Mike Brunton
Illustrator: Alan Lathwell
Short code: DARK 9
Publication Date: 20 Nov 2015
ISBN: 9781472811561
Format: Paperback
Number of Pages: 80

On one terrible night in August 1895, the world changed forever. Grey metal cylinders, launched from Mars and hurtled through space, came crashing down in southern England. The next 15 days were marked by courage and despair, hope and shock, defeat and fleeting victory as Queen Victoria's army struggled to contain the terrible alien threat. The war, man against machines from space, was fought without mercy on both sides. And the outcome would be decided by the smallest of things…

This book covers the whole of the Anglo-Martian conflict, beginning with a look at the relative strengths and weakness of the two armies, both English and alien, and comparing the different strategies employed. It then takes a detailed look at the actual military struggle, covering all of the major engagements between the tripods and Victoria's army.

https://ospreypublishing.com/war-of-the-worlds-pb

Monday, 19 January 2015

The Heat Ray comes to life!

I was looking for this today and thought I had reposted it here - it certainly needs to be so here it is!
Courtesy of the TMP boards and the modelling brilliance of Scott Washburn. Bravo Sir! Bravo!
Here is his post in toto:

From the first moment I saw the All Quiet on the Martian Front Tripods I thought they just cried out to have some lights in them. Well, I figured out a way to do it!

How? Well, first, let me tell you that I know as much about electricity as your average 4-year old, so my method had to be very simple! Step one was to find a self-contained power and light kit that would fit inside the head of a tripod. No way was I going to try and have a remote power supply or lights and then try to send wires or fiber optics through the narrow legs of a tripod! A very little searching on-line found exactly what I was looking for:

This beautiful little set includes a battery, battery-holder, switch and LED light for about 5 dollars. The provided light was a bit too small so I got a bigger one for another couple of bucks. It's all available from here: link

Now, how to mount it? Well, the light itself is simple. Just drill a hole of the proper size through the nose of the tripod.

A little drilling, a little clean-up and it's ready.

I toyed with the idea of making another hole and poking the button of the switch through the body of the tripod, but I decided I would just leave the top of the head loose and access the button and the battery that way. The pegs in the top of the head fit very tightly into the holes in the lower part of the head. I wanted to loosen that up, but not too much. A little careful drilling did the trick.

After that, it was just a matter of hooking the wires of the LED up to the wires of the switch/battery and stuffing the whole thing into the head of the tripod with the light poking through the hole. Oh, I strongly recommend finishing all your painting before mounting the light!

And voila!

I have no idea how long the batteries will last, but they are easily replaceable and cheap and I keep them turned off when not in use. Sadly the apparatus is too large to fit in the head of a scout tripod, but I've got a lead on a smaller one.

And no "Rudolph" jokes, please!

Sunday, 19 October 2014

Great Martian War on Film!

WoW, this is fantastic! Really inspirational for players of All Quiet on the Martian Front too.

Great martian war from PLAZMA on Vimeo.

Thanks to http://www.history.co.uk/shows/the-great-martian-war and "Steam fantasy"for sharing the love on FB

Friday, 21 February 2014

All Quiet on the Martian Front Playtest

Miles has posted some great pics and thoughts on a recent test game he played of this game. I managed to resist the Kickstarter because nobody else around me was interested and its in a scale I don't usually use. I'm now starting to really regret that decision.
http://lairoftheubergeek.blogspot.com.au/2014/02/all-quiet-on-martian-front-playtest.html

Friday, 1 November 2013

Tripods Ahoy!

Earlier this year there was a kickstarter for "All Quite on the Martian Front" which I missed while I was away. In catching up on my aethernet news I saw these smashing pictographs from Historican 2013 in July of these wonderful models in action!