HMS Thunder Child and the battle of the Blackwater estuary

At the mouth of the River Blackwater, an evacuation operation is in full swing.  Refugees from London are attempting to escape across the river in whatever boats are available a few launches and the Irondclad Ram HMS Thunder Child.  British Army forces are on both banks assisting with some old fortifications originally protecting the river mouth.  Then emerging from the sea are several of the deadly Martian tripods.  Does the human player focus the ships on the evacuation saving as many lives as possible, or send some of them to sacrificially fight off the tripods? Does the Martian player attack on a broad front or narrow point and try to defeat the military forces and let the humans escape or collect as many humans as possible?  This is a AQMF 'Harvest' scenario based on the H.G. Wells book.  The table is mostly water with land on half of two sides, several boats, special martian tripod bases that are partially submerged, and of course the HMS Thunder Child.
There were a few ironclads from the previous site but they were mostly paper constructs.  I will make a resin one as I am pretty hard on my toys taking them to conventions, etc.