Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

Hubbard had no more intention of conducting geological surveys than he had of relinquishing
control of the Church of Scientology and its handsome income. His real objective was to shake off
the fetters on his activities and ambitions imposed by tiresome land-based bureaucracies; his
vision was of a domain of his own creation on the freedom of the high seas, connected by
sophisticated coded communications to its operations on land. Its purpose would be to propagate
Scientology behind a screen of business management courses.
Before the end of 1966, the 'Sea Org' - as it would inevitably become known - had secretly
purchased its first ship, the Enchanter, a forty-ton sea-going schooner. To further obscure his
involvement, Hubbard asked his friend Ray Kemp to be a part owner. Kemp was the man who
believed that Hubbard could move clouds with the power of his mind and when he showed up at
Saint Hill to sign for the Enchanter he swore that Hubbard played a little magical trick on him: 'We'd
been sitting talking for hours and it was getting dark when he said, "Well I guess we'd better get
this thing signed." I said, "Do you have a pen?" and he said, "Yes, it's over there." I went to pick up
the pen on his desk and it disappeared. I thought at first it was the light, but I tried three times to
pick up the pen and each time it was not there and I realized he was making it disappear. In the
end I said to Ron, "If you'll just leave the bloody pen still for a moment, I'll sign". He could do fun
things like that, he was just playing a game.'[2]
Shortly after the purchase of the Enchanter, the Hubbard Explorational Company bought an old,
rusty North Sea trawler, the 414-ton Avon River, moored at Hull, a busy seaport on the north-east
coast of England. Hubbard then flew to Tangier in Morocco, where he planned to continue his
'research', leaving his family at Saint Hill Manor. Mary Sue wanted to stay behind because Diana,
star pupil at the local dancing school, had been chosen to present a bouquet to Princess Margaret,
who was due to open the Genée Theatre in East Grinstead a few weeks later.
Before being driven to the airport, Hubbard scribbled instructions for various members of the 'sea
project'. One of them was Virginia Downsborough, a plump and cheerful New Yorker who had been