Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

third issue included 'Grounded', another bloodthirsty Hubbard story, this one a description of a
naval engagement on the Yangtze river, swirling with headless corpses, in which the Commanding
Officer of HMS Spitfire meets a sticky end.
In May, Ron won the Literary Review's drama contest with a one-act play, The God Smiles. Set in a
café in Tsingtao in Communist China, the plot hovered uncertainly between Chekhov and farce and
involved a White Russian officer and his lover hiding behind a curtain to escape arrest by a
tyrannical warlord.
Ron was pleased to have his work acknowledged, but he was by then immersed in a new and
consuming project that would temporarily take precedence over all his other interests - even
gliding. He was making plans to lead an 'expedition' to the Caribbean.
Other, less bombastic, students might have been inclined to describe the venture as a 'summer
cruise', but that was not Ron's way. No, it was to be nothing short of a fully-fledged expedition and
he was to be its leader. He had already decided on a suitably grandiose title - the Caribbean Motion
Picture Expedition. Its dubious scientific aim was to explore and film the pirate 'strongholds and
bivouacs of the Spanish main' and to 'collect whatever one collects for exhibits in museums'.[11]
The background to the 'expedition' was that Ron and his friend Ray Heimburger had discovered a
big old four-masted schooner, the Doris Hamlin, berthed in Baltimore and available for charter
through the summer. Two hundred feet long and 1061 gross tons, she had never been fitted with
engines and was thus not exactly overwhelmed with business. Ron had a long talk with the
skipper, Captain Fred Garfield, and reckoned that if he could get together about fifty other students
they could afford to charter the Doris Hamlin for the whole of the summer vacation. After all, he
reasoned, with unemployment in the Unites States topping thirteen million, no one could entertain
much hope of finding a vacation job. It did not take him long to find enough volunteers to join him - a
tribute to his enthusiasm, organizational ability and salesmanship.
The first report of the forthcoming expedition in the Hatchet, on 24 May 1932, was not by-lined but
bore all the hallmarks of L. Ron Hubbard's florid literary style. 'Contrary to popular belief,' it began,
'windjammer days are not over and romance refuses to die the death - at least for fifty young
gentleman rovers who will set sail on the schooner Doris Hamlin from Baltimore on 20 June for the
pirate haunts of the Spanish Main . . .
'According to L. Ron Hubbard, the strongholds and bivouacs of the Spanish Main have lain
neglected and forgotten for centuries and there has never been a concerted attempt to tear apart
the jungles to find the castles of Teach, Morgan, Bonnet, Bluebeard, Kidd, Sharp . . . Down there
where the sun is whipping up heat waves from the palms, this crew of gentleman rovers will reenact
the scenes which struck terror to the hearts of the world only a few hundred years ago - with
the difference that this time it will be for the benefit of the fun and the flickering ribbon of celluloid. In
their spare time, if they have any, they will scale the heights of belching volcanoes, hunt in the thick
jungles, shoot flying fish on the wing . . .'
Apart from exploring and 're-enacting' pirate scenes (a perhaps questionable contribution to
science), the 'gentlemen rovers' also planned to collect valuable botanical specimens, write
articles for travel magazines and make a number of short movies. 'Scenarios will be written on the
spot in accordance with the legends of the particular island and after a thorough research through
the ship's library, which is to include many authoritative books on pirates.'
The itinerary was similarly crowded - during the one hundred-day cruise it was planned to stop at