Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

aided peak and a cloak in the same hue, lined with scarlet silk. He looked, Urquhart reported,
'most peculiar'.
Quentin Hubbard, now twenty, began rehearsing with the dance troupe and enjoyed it so much he
made the mistake of telling his father he would like to be a dancer. 'Oh no you wouldn't,' Hubbard
replied. 'I have other plans for you.' There was no further discussion and Quentin was no longer
allowed to perform. Not long afterwards, he made a feeble attempt at suicide while the ship was
docked at Funchal in Madeira.
'He'd gone missing ashore for a while,' said his friend Doreen Smith, 'and while people were out
looking for him he just walked back on board. I went to see him in his cabin to make sure he was
OK and found him lying on his bunk. He smiled at me and I said, "Hi, how are you feeling?" He
said, "Not so good, my stomach's real upset." Then he said, "Doreen, I've done the most awful
thing. I've taken a whole lot of pills." I said, "Oh shit. Get out of the bunk and don't go to sleep." I
began walking him around the cabin and said, "You know I'm going to have to tell your Dad, don't
you?" He nodded and said, "I know. He'll know what to do."'
Doreen ran to the Commodore's cabin and said 'Quentin's taken some pills.' Hubbard did not need
it spelled out. He told Doreen to fetch some mustard from the galley and mixed it into a drink which
he made Quentin gulp down. The boy vomited repeatedly and was taken to the sick bay to recover.
His father sent down a message that as soon Quentin was well enough to leave the sick bay, he
was to be assigned to the RPF. Mary Sue, who had a reputation for protecting her children against
the excesses of the ship's regime, was powerless to intervene. She was supposed to be
responsible for welfare on board - indeed, she had won a special dispensation from the
Commodore to allow married couples in the RPF to spend one night together a week - but knew
her husband was in a towering rage over Quentin and there was nothing she could do.
Rebecca Goldstein was among the inmates of the RPF when Quentin arrived. 'It was real tough for
him,' she said. 'He was very delicate and refined, not at all self-important, very unlike his father. He
had hardly any facial or body hair and it was very hard to say whether he had started shaving. There
were rumours that he'd attempted suicide before. He cringed from his father, he was completely
overwhelmed by him.'
The valiant attempts of the Apollo Stars and its associated dance troupe to win the hearts and
minds of the Spanish and the Portuguese people did not meet with overwhelming success,
although the political climate did not help. There had been a military coup in Portugal earlier in the
year and the subsequent unease tended to make the Portuguese nervous of mysterious foreign
ships calling at its ports for no apparent reason. The Apollo had also managed to upset the
Spaniards by mistakenly attempting to enter a major naval base at El Firol.
The ship's real problem, however, was that its 'shore story' was wearing thin. Portuguese and
Spanish port authorities were still being told that the Apollo was owned by a highly successful
business consultancy firm, but all they could see was an old, rust-streaked ship, often festooned
with ragged laundry and crewed by young people in tattered, ill-assorted uniforms. It was little
wonder that suspicions mounted about its activities and rumours took hold that the ship was
operated by the CIA.
Jim Dincalci, who had been put ashore to run a port office in Funchal, Madeira, became alarmed by
the rumours. 'It seemed to be common knowledge in Madeira that the ship was not what it was
supposed to be and most people seemed to think it was a CIA spy ship. I had made friends on the
island and had contacts in local Communist cells. The word was that the Communists were out to