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had lifted and he seemed completely in control—relaxed and condent, even jovial. The
crew were mainly drinking Spanish wines, but Hubbard favored rum and Coke—an
eighth of a glass of Coke and seven-eighths rum—one after another through the evening.
The heavens seemed very close in the dark harbor. Hubbard would point to the sky and
say, “That is where the Fifth Invaders came from. They’re the bad guys, they’re the ones
who put us here.” He said he could actually spot their spaceships crossing in front of the
stars, and he would salute them as they passed overhead, just to let them know that they
had been seen.
During a session with her auditor, Hana revealed the story of Madame Blavatsky’s
prophecy of the red-haired man. Soon afterward, Hubbard came up on deck and gave
her an intense look. From that point on, she became his favorite. He appointed her the
rst female Sea Org lieutenant. That day, she had a photograph made of herself in her
Sea Org uniform—white shirt, dark tie and jacket, with a lanyard over one shoulder. She
is young and elegant, her blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. After that, she rose
through the Sea Org ranks with astonishing speed, often wondering if the revelation
about the red-haired man was responsible for her rapid promotions.
Hubbard would drive over from his villa in Las Palmas to inspect the work on the
Avon River. The lower holds of the ship were converted into oces and berthing spaces;
new equipment—including radar and a gyrocompass—were installed, the screw
replaced, and the hydraulic system completely overhauled. The inexperienced Sea Org
members did most of the work, although Spanish laborers did the welding and
sandblasting. Whenever Hubbard spotted something wrong, he would be instantly
transformed from the jovial and avuncular gure the crew adored into a raging,
implacable tyrant. Hana, who was serving as master-at-arms, would dread seeing the
“Commodore”—as Hubbard titled himself—arrive, since she felt responsible if anything
went wrong. One day, when the Spanish workmen were painting a rust coat on the hull
of the ship, she spotted Hubbard walking across the beach with his chief ocer and his
rst mate, smoking and chatting happily. Then he suddenly stopped. His eyes went into
slits and he began bellowing, “The rollers! The rollers!” Puzzled, Hana leaned over the
side of the ship, then saw what had caught Hubbard’s attention: tiny threads poking
through the paint, which had been left by the cheap rollers that the workmen were
using. “As those threads decomposed, they would leave little apertures for seawater to
leak behind the rust coating,” she realized. “It destroyed the integrity of the entire rust
coating, and that’s what Hubbard was screaming about as he lumbered toward the ship.
And what amazed me was that he saw it at forty to sixty feet away from the ship. Later
on, I walked that distance from the ship to see if I could see those little hairs coming out
of the rust coat. There was no way I could see them. That added to my feeling of wonder
and mystique about Hubbard.”
IN TRUTH, Hubbard had very poor eyesight. Before the war, both the Naval Academy and
the Naval Reserve had rejected him because of his vision, and all during the war he wore
glasses. In 1951, when he was being evaluated for a medical disability, his vision tested