Royal Navy’s torpedo ram HMS Polyphemus (1881) in a drydock. There’s a torpedo tube in the centre of the ram.

The third HMS Polyphemus was a Royal Navy torpedo ram, serving from 1881 until 1903. A shallow-draft, fast, low-profile vessel, she was designed to penetrate enemy harbours at speed and sink anchored ships.[3] Designed by Nathaniel Barnaby primarily as a protected torpedo boat, the ram was provided very much as secondary armament.[2][4]
It has been suggested[5] 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, and Polyphemus was the only ship of this type which the Royal Navy possessed.

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