Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

Commodore's hiding place in Queens, New York.
In September 1973, Hubbard got word from the Guardian's Office that the threat of extradition had
diminished and it was safe for him to return to the ship and, coincidentally, to his wife and children.
He left next day, with Paul Preston, on a Boeing 747 bound for Lisbon, leaving Dincalci behind to
pack up all their belongings and close the apartment at Codwise Place.
No one on the ship knew where Hubbard had been for the previous ten months, nor that he was
returning, but his arrival back on board was predictably cause for celebration.
'When he came back on board he looked better than I had ever seen him look,' said Hana
Eltringham. 'He was bright and bouncy, busting out all over. He had lost weight and could hardly
contain his happiness at being back.'[3]
If there was an emotional reunion with Mary Sue and the children, it was not widely observed.
Instead, Hubbard gathered the crew on A deck to explain that he had been away touring the orgs in
the United States, raising quite a laugh when he said that he had walked into some of them without
being recognized. Preston, sitting at the back of the room, knew it was a lie but obviously said
noticing; he had once driven Hubbard past the New York org but all the Commodore had said was
that he thought it needed a bigger sign.
While Hubbard had been away, his accommodation on the Apollo had been extended and
improved and his research room had been totally encased in lead, insulated from contact with the
hull, to make it sound-proof. A working party had spent three months crawling through the
ventilation shafts and scrubbing them with toothbrushes in order that he would no longer be
troubled by his well-known allergy to dust. In the previous few weeks the ship had been cleaned
from stem to stern and every deck subjected to a 'white glove inspection'. Any ledge or fiat surface
that produced a smudge on the fingers of a white cotton glove resulted in the entire area being
cleaned again.
The Commodore soon had the ship on the move and there were many light hearts on board when
the Apollo weighed anchor and set sail, after almost a year in dock in Lisbon. She headed north
along the Atlantic coast of the Iberian peninsula, stopping for a few days at the historic cities of
Oporto and Corunna, then turning south again to Setubal and Cadiz. At the beginning of December,
she returned to Tenerife in the Canary Islands, one of her regular ports of call before the Lisbon refit.
Hubbard wanted to spend some time ashore in Tenerife taking photographs, and his cars and
motor-cycles were unloaded on to the dock. He had at his disposal a big black Ford station wagon,
a 1962 yellow Pontiac Bonneville convertible and a Land Rover, but as often as not he chose to
make his forays ashore astride his monstrous Harley Davidson, on which no doubt he cut a
particular dash.
One afternoon, snaking round the switchback curves up in the volcanic mountains of Tenerife,
Hubbard skidded on a patch of loose gravel, lost control and fell off, smashing several cameras
that were on straps round his neck. Although in considerable pain, he managed to get back on the
bike and ride it down to the port. He let it drop on the quayside and staggered up the gangway of the
Apollo with his trousers torn and the mangled cameras still around his neck. Jim Dincalci, back on
board as medical officer, was summoned immediately. Only too well aware that he was not
qualified to deal with broken bones or possible internal injuries, he suggested that the
Commodore should be taken to a hospital for a check-up. Hubbard refused adamantly, but huffily