Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

'The ship started to drift across the southernmost outgoing lane towards the Moroccan coast. We
put our "Not under command" lights on so other ships could see we were drifting and started to
work frantically on the back of the poop deck to rig up the emergency steering. It was pouring with
rain and very cold. In the middle of all this we were in radio communication with Gibraltar asking for
help, for a tug to be sent out to bring us in. They refused. They said that because we had failed to
comply with our sailing orders we would not be allowed into any English port. I can remember LRH
pleading with them on the radio: "We have wives and children on board, we are at risk." But they
would not come to our aid. I was appalled. It was my first major shock.
'We had managed to find all the component parts to hook up the emergency steering on the aft
docking bridge and there we were, Ron, Pook and myself, hanging on to the manual steering
wheel trying to steer the ship while someone stood holding an umbrella over us, another shone a
torch on a little hand compass and someone else talked on a walkie-talkie to the bridge to the
person watching the gyro compass. Mary Sue was running backwards and forwards with cups of
steaming hot cocoa.
'I could still hear snatches of LRH talking to Gib on the ship-to-shore radio and I remember
standing there, holding on to the steering wheel with aching arms and tears streaming down my
face, thinking nobody wants us, where can we go? To be refused help by a British port brought
home to me the enormity of our situation and my empathy for the old man increased a thousand
fold. He was not wanted in England and he had been kicked out of various places around the
world. All I could think about was that no one wanted this brilliant man and the treasures he had to
offer.'
Denied entry into Gibraltar, the Royal Scotman continued into the Mediterranean under her
emergency steering and set a course for the little principality of Monaco, where Hubbard hoped he
would be more welcome. Food and water was running low and the cook was reduced to serving
soup made with seawater by the time the ship hove to off Monte Carlo in early December. She was
too big to enter the harbour, but the port authorities agreed to her being "re-fuelled and reprovisioned
by lighters, and engineers were brought on board to repair the steering. From Monaco,
the Royal Scotman sailed to Cagliari in Sardinia, where she docked for the first time since leaving
Southampton.
If Hubbard had a reason for visiting Sardinia, he kept it to himself. While they were there, he
received a cable which brought on another paroxysm of uncontrolled rage and sent everyone
around him diving for cover. The Avon River had been caught in hurricane-force storms north of the
Balearic Islands: much of the deck gear had been swept overboard and the terrified crew were very
shaken up. As Hubbard read the cable his face began to twitch. He strode to the chart table,
stabbed at it madly with his finger and bellowed, 'What were they doing up there?'
John O'Keefe, the unhappy Scientologist who had been given command of the Avon River, had
muddled his instructions and was miles off course when he ran into the storm. He should have
been far to the south of the Balearics, heading for a rendezvous with the Royal Scotman in Cagliari.
Hubbard was still seething when the Avon River finally limped into the harbour at Cagliari. He
refused to speak to O'Keefe and ordered a Committee of Evidence (a Com-Ev in Scientologyspeak)
to be convened, which inevitably found O'Keefe guilty of dereliction of duty. He was assigned
a lower condition, stripped of his post and given a lowly job in the engine room. O'Keefe, who
thought he had done well to save his ship, was devastated.
This humbling ritual cast something of a pall over the Christmas celebrations, after which the
Commodore ordered both ships back across the Mediterranean to Valencia in Spain - a five