Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

sixteen ports on the islands of Martinique, Dominica, Guadeloupe, Nevis, Montserrat, St Croix,
Vieques, Puerto Rico, Haiti, Jamaica, Gonave, Tortue and the Bahamas. More experienced
expedition leaders might have paused to ponder the feasibility of attempting to sail five thousand
miles in one hundred days in an old four-master with no auxiliary power, but Ron was able to draw
on all the overweening confidence of his twenty-one years and would not consider anything
remotely less ambitious.
The expedition certainly appeared to have impressive backing. There were reports that the
University of Michigan was providing technical support, the Carnegie Institute and the Metropolitan
Museum were somehow involved, a sea-plane had been shipped on board to take aerial pictures,
Fox Movietone and Pathé News were competing for film rights and The New York Times had
contracted to buy still photographs. Members of the expedition, it was said, would be sharing the
profits from these various lucrative deals.
It seemed that young Ron Hubbard had pulled off quite a coup and it was in the spirit of the
greatest possible optimism that the Doris Hamlin set sail from Baltimore on 23 June, only a few
days behind schedule. As the schooner slipped her moorings, spread her four great sails and
leaned into Chesapeake Bay, every man on board believed he was on the threshold of a great
adventure. Ron, standing in the bows with the wind ruffling his red hair, was grinning as broadly as
the rest, even though ten of the 'gentleman rovers' had entertained last-minute second thoughts
and pulled out, leaving the expedition in what he would later ominously describe as a 'delicate
financial situation'.
In Washington, nothing was heard of the expedition until 5 August, when the Hatchet reported that
the schooner had arrived, 'with everything ship-shape', at Bermuda on 6 July. The story quoted a
letter, presumably from Ron, explaining some of the expedition's early difficulties: 'We had one H---
of a time getting out of the Chesapeake Bay with the wind blowing in like the very devil. After that we
had a couple of days of calm. Then a stiff breeze came along and we keeled over and ran before it
nicely. But next it blew into a storm and for two days we were tossed and rolled about enough to
make nearly everyone sick. After that we got a break and the last three days our bowsprit has been
cutting through the brine at eight or nine knots.'
What was not explained was why, two weeks after leaving Baltimore, the Doris Hamlin was in
Bermuda, six hundred miles out in the Atlantic and almost as far from Martinique, her planned first
port of call, as Baltimore. It was a question that could not be answered until early in September
when the Doris Hamlin sailed back into Chesapeake Bay three weeks before her expected return.
In Baltimore, Captain Garfield, a man of few words but with thirty years' sailing experience, sourly
declared the voyage 'the worst trip I ever made'.
Even Ron, who did his best to put a brave face on it, could barely conceal the fact that the
Caribbean Motion Picture Expedition had been a disaster. From the start, nothing had gone right:
after leaving the east coast of the United States, storms had driven the schooner far off course and
Captain Garfield had told Ron they would have to put into Bermuda to replenish the fresh water
tanks, which had sprung a leak. Ron, who knew there was barely enough money in the kitty to cover
expenses, ordered the Captain to stand off the island to try and avoid harbour charges. Garfield
refused. A heated argument followed but the veteran skipper was not of a mind to take orders from
a twenty-one-year-old and sailed his ship into Bermuda harbour.
At this first landfall, eleven members of the expedition promptly announced they had had enough
adventure and intended to go home. They had been disgusted, Ron explained, by the 'somewhat
turbulent seas'. It transpired that the ship's cook also suffered from seasickness and so Ron fired