Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

Hubbard would show up every couple of days to check on the progress of the work, but it was never
going ahead fast enough and more sea project members were constantly being flown in to Las
Palmas to join the work-force. Hana Eltringham, a former nurse from South Africa, arrived in
August. 'At first sight the ship looked terrible, all streaked with rust,' she said. 'You had to climb a
long, shaky ladder to get up on to the deck and as I got over the side I could see everything was
covered in sand from the sand-blasting and then were people sleeping on the sand, obviously
exhausted.
'Nevertheless, it was a tremendous thrill to be there. It was a great honour to be invited to join the
sea project; we were an elite, like the Marine Corps. All of us were true and tried Scientologists,
highly motivated, and to me it was high adventure.'
After working as a deck hand for a couple of weeks, Hana was promoted to ethics officer. 'My job
was to run round making sure the crew weren't goofing. I felt I was responsible for catching errors
before he did because he would get very upset - he would literally scream and shout - if something
was not being done right. I was mostly scared of him in those days.
'One afternoon I was standing on the deck with a clipboard waiting for him to come on board and I
knew something was wrong because I saw his face start to contort when he was still 15 or 20
yards away, walking towards the slips. As he came up to the ship he started shouting, filling his
lungs and bellowing "What are they doing? Why are they doing that?" and pointing to the side of the
ship. He came up the ladder still screaming in a kind of frenzy. I didn't know what was the matter
and he told me to look over the side of the ship. I stuck my head over to see what the hell he was
screaming about. The painters who were putting white paint on the hull were using old rollers and
the paint had a kind of furry coat on it from the rollers. He'd seen that from many yards away. It was
extraordinary. I was awed.'[8]
Such incidents inevitably led to the offenders being assigned a 'lower condition', the penalties for
which were by then routinely formalized. The least serious was 'emergency' followed by 'liability', in
which hapless state the miscreant forfeited pay, was confined to 'org premises' and had to wear
the infamous dirty grey rag on one arm. In a condition of 'treason', all uniforms and insignia were
removed and the rag was replaced by a black mark on the left check. In 'doubt', the offender was
fined, barred from the org and could not be communicated with. Lastly came the dreaded 'enemy' -
'May be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of
the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed.'
Even though Hubbard had 'resigned' as president of the Church of Scientology, the flow of edicts
continued uninterrupted and he reminded Scientologists of the penalties for lower conditions in a
policy letter dictated at the Villa Estrella in Las Palmas. He also found time to record a taped lecture
in which he warned of a world-wide conspiracy to destroy Scientology. The resourceful Mary Sue
had apparently traced the conspiracy to the very highest levels, to a cabal of international bankers
and newspaper barons sufficiently powerful to control many heads of state, among them the British
Prime Minister, Harold Wilson.
While Hubbard was fulminating against international conspiracies and bellowing at his amateur
work-force as they struggled to prepare the Avon River for sea, good news arrived from a 'mission'
in Britain (tasks undertaken on Hubbard's behalf were always aggrandized as 'missions'). For
many months two senior Scientologists, Joe van Staden and Ron Pook, had been scouring
European ports for a big ship, something like a cruise liner, which could be used as the Sea Org's
flagship. In September, they reported by telex that they had found, laid up in Aberdeen, just the ship
that Ron was looking for. She was the Royal Scotsman, a 3280-ton motor vessel built in 1936 and