Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

Diana Hubbard was then fifteen, Quentin thirteen, Suzette a year younger and little Arthur just nine
years old. They would have the company of a few other children on the ship and a notice was
pinned in the saloon explaining how they were to be treated: 'A tutor will be provided for the children,
who will be assigned regular hours of work and play. Anyone who deprives a child of his or her
work or play will be assigned to a condition of non-existence. (Penalties for non-existence - Must
wear old clothes. May not bathe. Women must not wear make-up or have hair-do's. Men may not
shave. No lunch hour . . .)'[9]
Not everyone joining the crew was a volunteer. John McMaster, whom Hubbard had earlier
described as the first Pope of the Church of Scientology, had recently fallen into disfavour, probably
because he was beginning to become too influential. Slight and golden-haired, McMaster had been
touring the world as an evangelist for Scientology, attracting huge audiences, considerable
popularity and the dangerous enmity of L. Ron Hubbard. On a brief return visit to Saint Hill, he was
abruptly assigned a lower condition, deprived of all his awards and ordered to re-train from scratch.
He would recall his experiences years later with enormous bitterness, contemptuously referring to
Hubbard as 'Fatty': 'All of a sudden I was ordered to appear at Saint Hill Manor at nine o'clock on a
Sunday morning with all my clothes. There was a big open truck outside being loaded with files
and filing cabinets and I was told to get in the back. I had no idea where I was going. By the time we
got to Southampton Docks I was frozen, I could hardly move. This was November, don't forget. They
got me on to the poop deck and this big fat body appeared. It was Fatty. "Oh, so you've deigned to
come, have you?" be said. "Well I'm here, aren't I?" I said. "If you've come to join us, I'll come down
and shake your hand," he said. He stepped down, grabbed my hand, realized I was frozen and
started screaming and shouting to get me into a warm cabin. I sat in the cabin for about three
hours until I had thawed out. I was told that I was going to be a galley hand. By this time I was well
used to Hubbard's insanity and there was no way I was going to succumb to it. I wasn't bothered. If
they wanted me to clean the heads and scrub the decks, that was fine by me.'[10]
To supplement his inexperienced crew, Hubbard hired a couple of professional seamen, including
a chief engineer, but it did not prevent mishaps occurring even before the Royal Scotsman had put
to sea. One of the recruits was on duty at the gangplank as Quartermaster and failed to notice until
it was too late that the ship's rubbing strake had caught on the edge of the dock as the tide ebbed.
A small crowd of stevedores watched with undisguised amusement as the crew of the Royal
Scotsman tried to lever their enormous ship off the dock. It was hopeless: the rubbing strake
creaked, splintered and finally broke away from the hull.
Hubbard took the opportunity to parade the entire crew on the dockside to point out what had
happened and remind them that as thetans all of them must have had seafaring experience in one
or another of their past lives. 'The truth of the matter is that you have all been around a long time,' he
stressed. 'Stop pretending you don't know what it is all about, because you do know what it is all
about.' Amos Jessup said everyone felt better afterwards.
While all this was going on, Hubbard had despatched Hana Eltringham on a top secret mission to
re-register the Royal Scotsman in Sierra Leone in order to circumvent the attention of the Board of
Trade. Hana first flew back to Las Palmas, where she collected a Spanish lawyer who had
previously worked for the church, and then together they took a flight to Sierra Leone, a tiny,
mosquito-ridden republic on the west coast of Africa. In Freetown, the capital, it took thirty-six hours
to complete the paperwork, during which time Hana bought a large Sierra Leonese flag. On 28
November, less than three days after leaving Britain, she was on her way back to Gatwick carrying
the ship's new documents. She took a cab from the airport direct to Southampton Docks.