Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

hundred-mile voyage completed without incident, no doubt to the relief of both crews. Tied up
alongside in Valencia harbour, O'Keefe sought out his friend Hana Eltringham. 'I was shocked by
his condition,' she said. 'He had lost about twenty pounds and looked like a skeleton with hollow
eyes and sunken cheeks. It was unbelievable. He told me he was thinking of leaving and I began to
think about it too. It was the first time I really questioned what was going on. I mulled it over for
about a week, but in the end I couldn't go. I came back to the view that I was a solid Sea Org
member and that in order to achieve freedom I had to fight for it, that it wasn't necessarily an easy
road and that I would have to overcome obstacles and encounter suppression. It was a critical
moment, but I managed to suppress any desire to leave and get away from the insanity.'
No such doubts assailed Stanley Churcher, one of the three professional seamen on the Royal
Scotman. Hired as the ship's carpenter in Southampton, he was thoroughly sick of his ship-mates
by the time they reached Valencia. Placed in a 'condition of doubt' for 'defying an order, encouraging
desertion, tolerating mutinous meetings and attempting to suborn the chief engineer', Mr Churcher
employed a few choice words to tell the Scientologist officers what he thought of their 'mumbojumbo'
and was promptly sacked.
Back in England, Churcher told his story to the People, one of Britain's saucier Sunday
newspapers, who gleefully published it under the headline 'AHOY THERE - It's the craziest cruise on
earth' along with pictures of the ship and L. Ron Hubbard, described as the 'boss' of the 'mindbending
cult' of Scientology. Mr Churcher was withering in his disdain. 'There were seven officers of
this Scientology lot,' he said, 'who used to swank about in blue and gold-braid uniforms, but I
reckon they knew next to nothing about seamanship. Four of them were women. Hubbard called
himself the Commodore and had four different types of peaked cap. Hubbard's wife, who had an
officer's uniform made for her, seemed to enjoy playing sailors.
'Every day they went below for lectures, but we seamen were never admitted. It was all so blooming
mysterious I tried to find out more. I offered to give them seamanship lectures and they were so
pleased at these they gave me a free beginner's course in Scientology. I was give a test on their Emeter,
a sort of lie detector, and a woman officer asked me a lot of personal questions, including
details of my sex life. The oldest student was a woman of seventy-five who told me she was
convinced that Mr Hubbard would fix her up with a new body when she died.
'I couldn't make head nor tail of it.'[11]
1. Letter from assistant secretary, Explorers Club, 8 December 1966
2. Interview with Kemp