Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

Aunt Marnie knew all about 'Ron and Polly's trip' because they had asked her to look after Nibs and
Katie at The Hilltop while they were away. She and her husband, Kemp, were living in Spokane, but
Kemp had been unemployed throughout the Depression and they were happy to move into The
Hilltop as Kemp thought he might find work at the Navy Yard in Bremerton. 'It was a beautiful spot,'
said Marnie. 'Polly had fixed up the house and the garden real nice. She was very clever with
flowers, very good at gardening. From the garden you could see the ferry boats coming over from
Seattle.'
A few days before they were due to leave, Ron offered to take Marnie and Toilie for a trip round the
bay in the Maggie. It was not an outing that augured well for the Alaskan Radio-Experimental
Expedition - 'We were quite a ways out', Marnie recalled, 'when the engine suddenly went phut-phut
- out of gas. Polly was furious and shouted at Ron, "I thought you were going to re-fuel it." He had
forgotten to do it. We prayed for a wind to blow so we could get in under sail. In the end we had to
drain the little oil lamps. That gave us enough fuel to give the engine a shot to get us moving, then
we would drift for a bit and give it another shot and finally we got back. That was my last trip on the
Maggie.'[17]
The 'expedition' departed its Yukon Harbor 'base' in July, with May, Marnie, Toilie and Midge and
their various children waving farewell from the quayside. Marnie and Kemip settled into The Hilltop
with Nibs and Katie, their own two children and Marylou, the daughter of Marnie's sister, Hope. For
the next several months their only contact with Ron and Polly was through letters posted from
various ports in British Columbia as the Maggie sailed erratically northwards along the Pacific
coast of Canada.
From the start, the Maggie's new engine, fitted only a few weeks before they left Puget Sound, gave
trouble. On their second day out, nosing through thick fog in the Juan de Futa Strait, between
Vancouver Island and the US coast and barely eighty miles from Bremerton, the engine spluttered
and died. They very nearly ran aground before Ron could get it going again. The same thing
happened in Chatham Sound, off Prince Rupert, also, coincidentally, in a pea-souper.
On Friday 30 August, the Maggie limped into the harbour at Ketchikan, Alaska, with the engine
crankshaft banging ominously. Ketchikan was a small fishing and logging community surrounded
by spruce forests on the southern tip of the Alaskan panhandle, some seven hundred miles from
Bremerton. The Maggie's arrival merited a story in the Ketchikan Alaska Chronicle, although no
mention was made of the expedition:
'Captain L. Ron Hubbard, author and world traveller, arrived in Ketchikan yesterday in company with
his wife aboard the vest pocket yacht, Magician. His purpose in coming to Alaska was two-fold, one
to win a bet and another to gather material for a novel of Alaskan salmon fishing.'
It seems Ron told the newspaper that friends had wagered it was impossible to sail a vessel as
small as the Maggie to Alaska and he was determined to prove them wrong. 'Captain Hubbard
covered their bets and, now that he has arrived, will have the satisfaction of collecting.'
Ron no doubt wished the story was true, for he had hopelessly underestimated the cost of the trip
and they were already so short of money that they could not afford to get the engine repaired. More
in hope than anticipation, he sent an angry cable to the engine supplier in Bremerton demanding a
replacement crankshaft, free of charge. Meanwhile, they were effectively marooned in Ketchikan.
While Ron and Polly were carefully saving wherever they could, a letter arrived from Marnie saying
that Nibs had been up crying all night with a toothache and she had taken him to the dentist. Ron