Part Three: L. Ron Hubbard's High Sea Adventures With His Private Cult Navy

In Part Three of our Series on L. Ron Hubbard, Robert is joined again by Caitlin Durante (The Bechdel Cast) to discuss how L. Ron Hubbard spent 99% of his waking hours making up insane lies and died worth $600 million.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
H Hello friends, I'm Robert Evans, and this is once
again Behind the Bastards to show where we tell you
everything you don't know about the very worst people in
all history. We are two hours and change into talking
about l Ron motherfucking Hubbard. You listen to part one
if you haven't already, don't drop into part three like
a weirdo. Although these are kind of self contained stories.

(00:22):
In part one, we talked about Hubbard's childhood is incessant
decades of lying that time he accidentally bombed metal in
the ocean a hundred times, and then the birth of dionetics.
Episode two we talked about how dionetics became a fad
and then transitioned into scientology, which eventually became a religion.
We also talked about time Hubbard kidnapped his baby uh.

(00:44):
And now in part three, we're going to talk about
l Ron Hubbard's adventures with his own navy YEA. In
nineteen sixty seven, Lafayette Ron Hubbard, a fifty six year
old grandfather and father of seven whose only prior naval
experience involved bombing an iron ore deposit, bought a small
flotilla of ships, declared himself commodore, designed uniforms and launched

(01:05):
an eight year seaborn odyssey. Yeah, he and his sailors
were hunted by the French government, British journalists, the FBI,
and god knows how many other state and national intelligence agencies.
The story I'm about to tell is one of those
reasons I can't quite hate l Ron Hubbard. He was
a monster, but he always with the extra mile. Like
he he he always did the thing that made him
a super villain, and in this case, it was buying

(01:28):
his own navy. The world is so full of so
many people like Steven Seagal who we just talked about,
who like have their own vanity bands, like a rich
personal pay artists to hang out with them so that
they can pretend to be good. That was not l
Ron Hubbard's way. He bought a navy. Eric Prince is
the only other guy I know who bought a navy.
So good on both of them, is what I'm saying. Yeah,

(01:51):
he's like doing the extra credit of being a piece
of ship. Yeah, he is a piece of ship who
does like the homework for an extra ten points on
the mid term. L Run Hubbard. So in September of
nineteen sixty six, Hubbard resigned as president of the Church
of Scientology. It was just for Shell. He continued to
direct his religion and secret and even as he bought

(02:13):
a forty ton schooner named the Enchanter via the Hubbard
Explorational Company, he bought two more boats, a four four
tons sea trawler and a three thousand, two hundred and
eighty ton cattle freighter. Hubbard paid for a few professional
seamen to operate his navy, but the bulk of its
sailors were scientologists with no practical seafaring experience, just the

(02:33):
type of person you want to have on your boat. Well,
I think most nautical experts will agree that amateurs are
the best people to manage three thousand, two hundred and
eighty ton boats, which is why our navy is run
entirely by amateurs. Yeah, it's a great idea. One of
these volunteer sailors was Virginia Downsborough, a New York auditor
whose main qualification was a pretty good understanding of nuts

(02:56):
and the fact that she had owned a small sail
boat as a child. Hubbard put her in charge of
refitting the Enchanter, which again was a forty ton schooner. Somehow,
bit by bit, the Navy got patched up in underway,
mainly because they had unlimited money to do all this with.
So that does help. You can be incompetent if you've
got tens of millions of dollars, if you are super rich,

(03:17):
you can do whatever you want, as we find out.
As we find out, So Virginia got the Enchanter patched
up and sailed the boat down to Las Palmas in
the Canary Islands, where Hubbard was waiting for her in
a hotel room. He'd had a complete nervous collapse him no,
Ron Hubbard, nervous collapse. The guy you kidnapped his own child. Quote.

(03:39):
When I went into his room, there were drugs of
all kinds everywhere. He seemed to be taking about sixty
different pills. I was appalled, particularly after listening to all
his tirades against drugs in the medical profession. There was
something very wrong with him, but I didn't know what
it was, except that he was in a state of
deep depression. He told me he didn't have any more
gains and wanted to die. That's what he said, I
want to die. Yeah, maybe he and his own maybe

(04:01):
he read Excalibur. Hubbard may have been collapsing because all
of these different national governments were investigating scientology, but it's
probably just an act because as soon as Virginia arrived,
he beat a hasty recovery, which makes me think he
just put on that whole thing as a show and
then announced the development of a research accomplishment of immense magnitude.
His new brain baby was the material that would become

(04:22):
the O T three material of the scientology curriculum. This
is what everyone knows from South Park and stuff, the
story about Zeno and the volcanoes. This is when he
came up with that. And he claimed the power of
these revelations has caused him horrific injuries. He said he'd
broken his back, knee, and arm writing it, which is
why he needed to be all fucked up. When she
saw him writing is a context sport. We all break

(04:44):
a bone or two all writing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's
pretty badass writing typing for hours, Virginia saw no evidence
that he'd been injured at all. Obviously. In fact, is
the boat got underway, she came to see a new
side of her. Guru Ron used to like to sit
up and talk half the night. It long after Mary
Sue had gone to bed. He had this intensibility to communicate,
and it was fascinating to listen to him. I was

(05:05):
intrigued by the concept he presented of himself as being
a constant victim of women. He talked a lot about
Sarah Northrop and seemed to want to make sure I
knew that he had never married her. I didn't know
why it was so important to him. I had never
met Sarah, and I couldn't have cared less, but he
wanted to persuade me that the marriage had never taken place.
When he talked about his first wife, the picture he
put out of himself was of this poor wounded fellow
coming home from the war and being abandoned by his

(05:27):
wife and family because it would be a drain on them.
He said he had planned every move along the way
with Mary Sue to avoid being victimized again. L Ron
Hubbard victim of women? Wow? I mean, and therefore a
feminist icon. Oh? Absolutely. I think he'd be the first
to tell you that. I think he'd be the first
to tell you that he invented feminism when he was
sailing to Central America as a child. Yeah. As the

(05:50):
Enchanters sailed away from Las Palmas, Hubbard drew maps and
made the crew stop at random islands to search for
gold that he said he had buried in past lives.
Hubbard the Enchanter out on extended cruises around the Canary
Islands to search for this gold. Quote. He told us
he was hoping to replace the Enchanter's ballast with solid gold.
I thought it was great fun, the best show on earth,
because he already has so much money. He doesn't need

(06:12):
he does. He just wants to like plate his boat
in gold, in the gold that he buried. Yeah. The
Avon River was refitted next and sailed out of port
by a professional skipper named John Jones. Jones was the
only actual seaman on the boat. Quote. My crew were
sixteen men and four women, scientologists who wouldn't know a
trawler from a tram car. I don't know a trawler

(06:33):
from a tram car either. No. But the important thing
about this is that he's letting women on his boats now.
He is feminist icon Hut. I was instructed not to
use any electrical equipment. Apart from Light's radio and direction finder.
We had radar. Another advanced equipment, which I was not
allowed to use. I was told it was all in
the organ book, which was to be obeyed without question.
So using scientology naval tech, the boat ram the dock

(06:56):
as it was leaving and then immediately got lost. The
only reason they found their way eventually is that Captain
Jones had a sexton and a watch, which was the
only thing that stopped them from getting lost in the ocean.
A true semen, Yeah, a true semen. It's frustrating because
you read the stories of these semen and they're all
very talk about how crazy this is, but they're also
all really misogynists, so like they will be like and
he had all these guys that didn't know anything, It's like, okay, yeah,

(07:17):
that's totally reasonable to be frustrated at a crew that's
never sailed. And they'd be like, and three of them
were women. That's not really the thing that is shocking
to me about the detail. Hubbard developed a new conditioned
scale for his growing Flatilla's discipline. You remembery he had
this his conditions if you it was his way of
like telling you you you've done something bad, you need

(07:38):
to be penalized, penalized sailors would be ranked on a
scale from a condition of emergency, which was a minor infraction,
to a condition of liability, which resulted in the scientologist
losing pay and being locked in their bunk. All liabilities
were also required to wear that dirty gray cloth rag
on their army. Okay. The next serious condition was treason,
where the affinity lost his right to wear a sea

(07:58):
or uniform. Came doubt, which essentially forced all other scientologists
to shun you, and then finally enemy. According to el
Ron Hubbard, anyone who was an enemy of scientology may
be deprived of property or injured by any means by
any scientologist without any discipline of the scientologist, maybe tricked, sued,
or lied to, or destroyed. So the scale of severity

(08:18):
here starts with emergency. Starts with emergency, which is not
that bad, No, it's pretty minor. Then goes to liability,
which is a little worse. And then what's the third one, doubt? Okay, doubt,
which is where you get shut and then an enemy,
you're kicked off the boat and people can kill you. Okay,
So that makes perfect sense, makes perfect sense that you know,
doubt is is really high up there. But emergency well

(08:43):
is a minor infraction. I think that's why we call
it the emergency room, and it's where you go when
things that aren't very bad happened to you. Write, but
the doubt room, the doubt room fucked up. You don't
want to go to the doubt room. People are dying
in the doubt room. Also shout out to the movie
Doubt But anyway, um, the movie based on el Ron
Hubbard's life. Certain certainly. The fleet gradually assembled, and the

(09:06):
three ships were quickly joined by dozens of volunteers from
other training centers in Scientology's vast domain. These young people
had joined the newly formed Sea Org and signed billion
year contracts to serve l Ron Hubbard. Many of them
were couples. Some even had children, so l Ron Hubbard's
navy had a daycare essentially billion years. Yeah, that's yeah, well,

(09:28):
there's again there's a lot to unpack with everything that said.
If you join the Sea Ork, you're so dedicated that
you're not just going to serve Scientology and l Ron Hubbard,
who thereferred to was l R H. A lot of
the time, you're just going to serve him in this life.
When you're reincarnated. You're still under contract. Okay. And then
the day what was a daycare thing? Well, there's a
daycare on the boat because a lot of these people

(09:49):
had kids. So there's a daycare on the boat and
el Ron Hubbard's navy. That just seems responsible, That just
seems responsible. The children watched each other and and we're
locked in a saloon. Okay, So on his boat around
Hubbard locked babies in a bar as I said, responsible. Yeah. Now,

(10:10):
there was a note on the door of l Ron
Hubbard's child saloon. It stated, okay, I'm ready, you are,
are you? It stated a tutor will be provided for
the children, who will be assigned regular hours of work
and play. Anyone who deprives a child of his or
her work or play will be assigned to a condition
of non existence. And that's the worst one, or that

(10:33):
the that's the least worst one. It's just another penalty condition.
There were a shipload of conditions. So if you stop
a kid from playing or working, it goes non existent emergency.
I'm not acent sure where all of these lie. Non
existence yet was another penalty condition. Scientologists condemned to non
existence had to wear old clothes stop bathing, wearing makeup,

(10:54):
or styling their hair. Men weren't allowed to shave, Lunch
was banned. Most of l Ron Hubbard's work is Commodore.
In this period was dreaming up every more brutal punishments
for scientologist who made mistakes. Yeah, what a forgiving man,
What a forgiving man with so many ways to punish you,
then he needs categories. On one occasion, recruit watching the

(11:14):
gang plank failed the spot that the ship's rubbing strike,
which is a boat thing I guess, had caught onto
the edge of the dock. It broke in. A bunch
of real sailors who were watching laughed at l Ron
Hubbard and his giant silly ship filled with cultist sailors.
In retribution, Hubbard assembled the crew and informed them that
all of their theatins had sailing experience in their other lives.
The truth of the matter, he said, is that you

(11:35):
have all been around a long time. Stop pretending that
you don't know what this is all about, because you
do know what this is all about. This is why
you had to be so harsh on them when they
fucked up. They had had whole other lives as sailors.
They knew how to do this ship, dare them exactly
like they didn't know. I don't care. If you're an
education major, now, three years ago you were sailing in
the high Sea, So get your ship together. I'm not

(11:56):
gonna peer into the logic of that too much. I
will say, if you're experience sailing a ship was four
hundred years ago, you probably still need a refresher. It
probably sucked some stuff up. Refresher course. Yeah, I go
a week without doing something and like it's a mess.
You know, you're you're like in Europe for two weeks
and you don't drive a car for a while, and
you come back and you're just a danger to yourself.
And he's just expecting he's people to pick this ship

(12:18):
right back up. Unreasonable way to deal with past lives, anyway.
Hubbard did hire more than one professional sailor to help
crew the thirty two hundred ton both that became the
flagship of his fleet. He hired three. That seems like enough.
One of them, Stanley Churcher, was the ship's carpenter. He
was placed in a condition of doubt for defying an order,

(12:38):
encouraging desertion, tolerating mutinous meetings and attempting to suborn the
chief engineer. He was soon sacked and he went to
a British newspaper to tell his story, and he was
on a scientologence. He knows he was getting money. He
was was like, I gotta hire some people who know
how to do boats stuff. So a British magazine called People,
not the People, just another anything called People published this

(13:01):
article under the title ahoy there it's the craziest cruise
on Earth. The article is not well written, very frustratingly
badly written. But I found a cop title though, yeah,
that title. I have found a copy of the text
on an anti scientology website that just put a copy
of this old article up there. It contained some interesting
quotes from Mr Churcher, which I'm going to read now. Certainly,

(13:24):
the captain of the vessel was none other than the
Mr l Ron Hubbard, himself a wartime officer in the
United States Navy. According to Mr Churcher, he called himself
Commodore and had four different types of peaked cap. Churcher
traveled with the Scotman, which was the name of the boat.
It had been the Scotsman, but then they reregistered the
British wouldn't let them sail the Royal Scotsman because it
didn't meet They registered it in Sierra Leone, but when

(13:48):
they registered it they fucked up the name and wrote Scotman,
so then it was the Royal Scotman. Wonderful. So Churchill
traveled with the Scotman to Monaco and Sardinia and eventually Valencia, Spain.
Church didn't know much about why they were sailing around.
At first, he was just for the paycheck, but it
soon became obvious to him that something was wrong with
this cult boat. I began to suspect things were a

(14:08):
bit odd. The minute I met this captain. He told
me he thought I was a reporter and at first
refused to have anything to do with me. Only when
he checked my semen's log book did he take me on.
Every day they went below for lectures, but we seemen
were never admitted. It was also blooming mysterious. I tried
to find out more. I offered to give them seamanship lectures,
and they were so pleased at these that they gave
me a free briginner's course in scientology. I was given

(14:29):
a test on their E meter, a sort of light
detector and a woman officer asked me a lot of
personal questions, including details of my sex life. I could
never make head or tail of their instructions, but I
played along because it made life easier. So that's nice.
Did he say Blooman in the middle? He was RETTI
he was really he's really Brittish, yeah, or Australian. One
of the ones that said he was some kind of

(14:51):
cute foreigner is adorable. Churcher noted that the scott Men
mostly seemed to act as a float in college for
young scientology students. He was surprised to how young a
lot of these people are. Quote. Some paired off in romances,
but the oldest student was a woman of seventy five
who told me she was convinced that Mr Hubbard would
fix her up with a new body when she died.
That's Gradually the young scientologists learned how to be half

(15:13):
decent sailors, although there were numerous near misses, harbor scrapes,
and destroyed engines as a result of their incompetence. Again,
they had infinite money, so that really makes it a
lot easier to have an untrained crew sale a fleet
of vessels around the world. If only the Titanic was well,
there's a good point. Just had scientologists aboard on you know,

(15:35):
future scientologists, people in their you know, past life, that
that horrible fate wouldn't have happened. And that's also another
part of Lauren Hubbard's logic, because if he's expecting these
people to be good at boats because their past lives
were good, what if their past lives ran the Titanic.
You don't know, are you how much are you vetting
their past lives? He's not doing it enough, that's for sure.

(15:56):
Fucking corpse resumes or something. How do you do this? Okay?
Hubbard spent all of his time on the boats in
a stately cabin, mostly writing new source material for his
religion and growing slowly more and more insane. Mary Maren,
a scientologist who wind up joining the Sea Org, recalled
these as pretty good times for the most part. He
used to stay up at night on the deck and

(16:17):
talk to us into the wee hours about his whole
track adventures, how he was a race car driver in
the Markab civilization. The mark Hab civilization existed millions of
years ago on another planet. It was similar to planet
Earth in the fifties, only they had space travel. Marcabians
turned out later not to be good guys, so it
wasn't a compliment. Their civilization was similar to ours. L R.
H said he was a race car driver called the
Green Dragon who set a speed record before he was

(16:39):
killed in an accident. He came back in another lifetime
as the Red Devil and beat his own record, then
came back and did it again as the Blue Streak.
Finally he realized all he was doing was breaking his
own records and it was no game anymore. Good okay,
she goes on. People would stand around listening to these
stories for hours, very overawed. At the time, it seemed

(17:00):
like a privilege and honor to share these things. To
hear him talking about things that went on millions of
years ago like it was yesterday. It was usually entertaining,
but I sometimes found it very stressful to take it
all in this powerful, booming outflow, and it was hard
to get away. One night, I was getting dizzy and
dared to ask if I could leave early. I could
hear my voice echoing in the cosmos as I said,
if you'll excuse me, I have to go to bed. Sir,
he said, Okay, sure, Oh so he was a nice

(17:24):
guy well that time. But yeah, he had a boat
full of young people that he could lie to and
they believed it. They had to. They got on a
boat and sail it around the world. Trapped. They're trapped,
trapped on a boat with a madman telling you about
his past life as an alien race car driver. I mean, okay,

(17:48):
I'm just curious about, like the psychology of people who
are so impressionable that they buy all that they buy
it and they eat eat it up. Because we live
in l A, You're going to find people within a
block of us who believe raw unfiltered water is the
healthiest thing to drink. People believe crazy shit, and then
they're trapped on a boat. It's really a great situation

(18:10):
to be a cold leader. The more I read about
Hubbard's years at sea, the more certain I became that
this was all just him going through the millionaire profit
version of a midlife crisis, because that really seemed to
be what he was doing. After he assembled the entire
fleet and got all the ships refitted l round, Hubbard
asked for thirty five volunteers and then took them on
the Avon River his smallest boat and sailed through the

(18:32):
Mediterranean to find gold that he'd buried in past lives. Well,
he does this a lot. He loves doing this ship.
He was doing it when he was a kid. He
just didn't say it was his in the past life.
He claimed to the crew that he had been preparing
all of his past lives to save the world with
his revelations, but this incarnation was the first time that
he'd gotten enough money and power to really have a
chance of doing it. So now he's going to collect

(18:52):
all of the gold that his past self had buried
in order to fund the next stage of scientology. He
said he'd been the commander of a war fleet too
thousand years ago and had buried treasure under a temple nearby.
That was the first treasure seeking mission that he sent
his boat on. And we're going to get into what
happened in his third and final treasure journey, but first
the treasures of Ads and we're back. We're talking about

(19:22):
l Ron Hubbard, who has just launched his third treasure
seeking voyage, the second voyage where he said it's stuff
buried by his past lives. So, yeah, one of his
crew members who was on this voyage recalled it was
an electrifying idea. We all thought it was high adventure.
Here was this guy who had cracked through the age
old mystery of the human condition, had dug into an
uncovered every aspect of human shortcoming, now broaching into a

(19:42):
new area, going to see with a bunch of people
in the Mediterranean and digging up buried treasure. It didn't
matter to me if it was true or not. What
matters being able to play a game that L. R.
H had designed. If it was important to him, I
would do the best I could. Okay, people are loyal
and weird, kind of dumb. The story of the less
Our a long. We've been people. So they didn't find
anything anywhere, obviously. They went to a bunch of different locations,

(20:04):
sailing around while Hubbard would tell them lurid stories of
his past lives, and they would occasionally dig on random islands.
Never found anything. I will say, he's a well traveled guy.
He's been around a lot now, been around, He's been around,
saw the world for sure. And so the mission of
Like the Sea thing is just to find treasure. It
seems there's no mission. This is just a thing they're doing.

(20:25):
They were out there for eight years and there was
no Objectiff. Yeah, it's it's pretty incredible. This all came
to a head when they sailed to Corsica, whe Hubbard
said a secret space station had been secretly crashed there
by him thousands of years ago. The station was parked
in a cavern and filled with pristine spaceships and equipment

(20:46):
for their next operation. I get the feeling he was
telling them they were going to take over the world
with advanced spaceships and stuff. They got near to where
Hubbard claimed his secret space fleet was waiting, but then
they got an urgent radio message from his wife telling
him to come back to the rest of the fleet
at Valencia. So Hubbard and his crew ended their treasure
surging without any actual treasure. Again. I kind of suspect

(21:06):
he ordered her to call, right. Don't you hate it
when you're on the verge of finding your like space
station that's in a cave on remote area and then
your wife calls. She's like, get back here, we need you,
And he's like, well, that's why my self help book
is called find your own Hidden Space Station and don't

(21:27):
let your wife call you. Stop it you're so good
at titles. Titles are really important. That's what sells a book,
that's right. And the name Remington's Winchester Colt, Well, Remington
Winchester Colt. Ruger, I can't use the same suit. You
gotta add a gun on. You gotta gotta throw one
other gun onto there, of course, Ruger mcglackowitz. So Hubbard

(21:50):
had left his wife in charge of the Royal Scotman.
She had done before he left, something inscrutable to displease him,
and so he put her and the whole ship in
the penalty condition. There was even a filthy a rag
tied to the boat's funnel, even the boats in trouble
boat shaving. When Hubbard caught up, he was furious to
find the boat anchored at night. He shouted at his

(22:12):
wife's ship through a bullhorn. Well, well, here's a ship
and liability that thinks that can anchor for the night,
taking it easy. It might be better training to keep
your ship moving at night, or are you scared to
keep going in the dark. So he's like basically yelling
at the boat boats now night. At this point, the

(22:35):
crew of the Scotman were filthy, exhausted and starving. None
of them had been able to wash for weeks. It
was several more weeks before Hubbard would grant them a
reassessment of their status. He eventually upgraded the boat's crew
to non existence and agreed to do a full inspection
to see if they deserved a better condition. When he
checked over the whole ship, it had been freshly painted
and polished, and Hubbard was apparently pleased enough that he

(22:55):
moved on board, made the ship his flagship, and lifted
the cruise sentence, so that's nice, you can forget. Hubbard
used less collective punishment after this point, but also more
strict individual punishments. According to bare Face Messiah, depending on
his whim, offenders were either confined in the dark and
the chain locker and given food in a bucket, or
assigned to chip paint on the billage tanks for twenty

(23:16):
four or forty eight hours without break. A third variation
presented itself when Otto Russ, a young Dutchman, dropped one
of the bow lines while the Royal Scotman was being
moved along the dock. Purple. With rage, Hubbard ordered Ruce
to be thrown overboard. No one questioned the Commodore's orders,
two crew members promptly grabbed the Dutchman and threw him
over the side. There was an enormous splash when he
hit the water, a moment of horror when it seemed

(23:37):
that he had disappeared, in nervous speculation that he might
have hit the rubbing strake as he fell. The rubbing
striking it's a part of a boat. Fortunately, Ruce knew
how to swim and he was able to get back
on board. But after that, tossing people overboard became a
Hubbard's favorite punishment. Well, they were all Olympic swimmers in
their past lives, they all learn how to swim. Well,
I'll tell you that much. Everyone just sort of went

(23:59):
with and people were soon throwing their friends and spouses
overboards at the whim of the Commodore, which is a
little weird. One member recalled. It was not really possible
to question what was going on because you were never
sure who you could trust to question. Anything Hubbard did
or said was an offense, and you never knew if
it would be reported. Most of the crew were afraid
that if they expressed any disagreement with what was going on,
they would be kicked out of scientology. That was something

(24:21):
absolutely untenable to most people, something you never wanted to consider.
That was much more terrifying than anything that might happen
to you in the sea Org. We tried not to
think too hard about his behavior. It was not rational
much of the time, but to even consider such a
thing was a discreditable thought, and you couldn't allow yourself
to have a discreditable thought. One of the questions in
a sect check was have you ever had any unkind
thoughts about L R H? And you could get into

(24:43):
very serious trouble if you had, so you tried not to.
So these guys were all doing auditing regularly. They were
hooked up to the EMAI news, which they thought felt
they were lying. So people got nervous that if they
even thought badly about all roun Hubbard, it would show
up and then get in trouble. I love a good
mind control, you know. That's really police Religion's the best.

(25:03):
He built a pretty good thought police religion. Like again,
he's really good at the things he does other than
writing science fiction. Back in the day, when I had
to do like Bringer shows as a stand up, I
couldn't get like three people to come to my shows,
and this guy gets what thousands tounds. It's hard to

(25:25):
say the exact numbers, but oh man, he's good. He's
damn good. Eventually, the fleet wound up at Corfu, a
beautiful Greek island. L Ron Hubbard felt he'd finally found
a government willing to put up with him because Greece
had just had a coup and a military dictatorship had
taken over. He praised Greek democracy, which is ironic when
it's just been overthrown by a military coup. He also

(25:46):
renamed his boats in honor of Greek mythology. The Royal
Scotman became the Apollo, the Avon River became the Athena,
the Enchanter became Diana. Around this time, the British government
decided to bar l Ron Hubbard from entry into the
United Kingdom. On the same day the was announced, a
BBC film crew had managed to track the cult leader
in his private navy down in Corfu. They recorded an
interview with l Ron Hubbard. It's fascinating. In the first

(26:08):
part of the interview, he claims that all of his
crew are trained in judo to defend from pirates, and
then my favorite part is at one point in the interview,
the interviewer asked him to just explain scientology, just to
give a very basic explanation of it, and Hubbard fucking
can't because it's nuts. We're gonna play that right now.
So you get to see l Ron Hubbard as the
comic couldn't explain it to the layman, you would have

(26:30):
a very difficult time. I guess you can't see it.
The subject of name means skill, which means knowing how
to know in the fullest sense of the word, apology,
which is study of So it is actually study of
knowing nous. That is what the word itself means. The
sum to me, that doesn't mean very much. I found

(26:54):
up for you in theory and increases one's knowingness. But
if a man were totally aware of what was going
on around him, he would find it relatively simple to
handle any outnesses in that. Even after three hours of talking,

(27:15):
we never got an explanation from him that we could understand.
I love the journalists. The journalists. Yeah, it's a really
fun interview. It'll be up on our side. I recommend
giving it a listen. Um. While in Greece, the Org
working day started at six am and ended at eleven
pm after a ninety minute nightly speech by l. Ron Hubbard.

(27:38):
Yeah you really gotta like listening to that guy, once
the York member recalled, we were always terrified of falling asleep.
L R. H. Would be carried away dramatizing different topics,
and we'd be pinching each other to stay awake. We
were terrorized. It was continuous stress and dress. The course
had not been going long before Hubbard decided that too
many mistakes were being made during auditing, and he announced

(27:58):
that in the future, those responsible for errors would be
thrown overboard. Everyone laughed at Ron's joke. The next morning,
at the regular muster on the f well deck, two
names were called out. As the students stepped forward. Sea
Org officers grabbed them by their arms and legs and
threw them over the side of the ship, while the
rest of the group looked on in amazement and horror.
So also, all of the residents of this Greek island
are watching as every day people just get thrown off

(28:20):
the side of this boat, and it just becomes this, like,
what the fund are they doing? If you've ever spent
time in a little Greek island. Everyone is a sailor
on those little islands. Everybody knows that everyone has a boat.
No one had ever seen ship like this, because it's
the kind of thing you don't do unless you're a lunatic.
Ye oh boy. Many of L. Ron Hubbard's young students

(28:41):
thought this was terrible, but none of them did anything
about it. On a Altringham, another SORG member recalled, I
thought it was terrible and humane and barbaric. Some of
the people on the course, or middle aged women. Julius Salmon,
the continental head of the l A Org, was fifty
five years old and in poor health, and she was
thrown overboard. She hit the water sobbing and screaming. L R.
H enjoy it without a doubt. Sometimes I heard him

(29:02):
making jokes about it. Those are the moments when I
came closest to asking myself what I was doing there,
But I always justified it by telling myself that he
must know what he was doing, and then it was
all for the greater good. People are amazing, Yeah, they
the justifications that they have to do to watch him,
oh man, to watch a man throw an elderly sick

(29:23):
woman off the edge of a fucking cruise liner essentially,
and then watch him like cackle about it. You're being
horribly mistreated, made to work for like nineteen hours a
day or something crazy like that, and then yeah, man, Well,
in fairness to Hannah, her passport and everyone else's passport
was kept in a safe by all Ron Hubbard. Okay,

(29:45):
so they couldn't even so they couldn't even really leave no, no,
their passports in a safe. Hubbard tried to bribe Greece
in much the same way he tried to bribe Rhodesia,
promising to build many new schools for his students on
Corfu and turned the island into a mecca of science oology.
But the Greeks didn't really want that to happen, so
eventually they kicked him out of their country. For three years,

(30:05):
Ron Hubbard's fleet sailed around the Atlantic Ocean with no
particular destination or goal. They never stayed anywhere longer than
six weeks. One crew member, recalled L. R. H. Said,
we had to keep moving because there were so many
people after him. If they caught up with him, they
would cause so much trouble that he would be unable
to continue his work. Scientology would not get into the
world and there would be social and economic chaos, if
not a nuclear holocaust. Right, I forgot this component of

(30:28):
it that he was just on international waters to escape
all of like the legal power, the fact that multiple
governments were now after him. Okay, I forgot about that part,
and now this is starting to make more sense. But
even so, he explicitly took to the highest seas because
there's no law there, which is why you go to
the highest seas. Yeah, every time I'm on the high seas,

(30:50):
it's because I'm a you know, fleeing the law. In
the Apollo sailed into Casa Blanca and the U S
console asked politely what the funk they were doing because
a lot of us that has were on this boat,
and it had been for years now. He was concerned
by the impossibility of getting a clear answer from anyone
about what was happening on these boats. By this point,
the ships were all registered in Panama and they were

(31:11):
claimed to be part of like a corporate venture. But
like everyone knew, something was fucking weird was going on.
So the US console asked the Panamanian console to try
and figure out what was happening. The Panamanian console found
the vessel badly damage because he got to inspect it
and believed everyone on board was in grave danger. He
couldn't actually get in touch with eut Ron Hubbard because
the commodore was locked up in a luxury hotel and
would not take phone calls. Well why not, Well he

(31:34):
sailed around the Atlantic. Altron Hubbard had plenty of time
to your finest theories about the international communist conspiracy he
now believed was trying to destroy him and his important work.
He based his plan off of something called the tin
Yaka Memorial. Have you ever heard of the Protocols of
the Elders Zion? No? No, A lot of anti Semitic
conspiracy theories traced back to it. Was created by Russians. Essentially,

(31:55):
Czarist Russian secret service operatives created this fake list that's
supposedly a plan of Jewish people conspiring to take over
the world. The Tanyaka Memorial was that but for Japanese people.
It was a fake Japanese plan for world domination that
I think was created in like the nineteen thirties. Hubbard
became convinced that this document held all of the information
about the secret international communist conspiracy to destroy him for

(32:17):
reasons that are unclear to me. I do not understand
how he made these logical leaps. I have not ready
satisfying explanation, which because he's such a reasonable guy and
so logically consistent. Yeah, anyway, Hubbard told his followers that
the dastardly members of the World Federation of Mental Health
were in codes with the US and British spy agencies
in a crusade to destroy him him. He's great, he's

(32:41):
charming all of the psychiatrists here against him because he's
the only one who knows how not to be crazy.
Get on his boat. Over his years at sea, Hubbard
did change his mind about the Tan Yaka Memorial conspiracy,
and it more from an international Communist conspiracy to an
international Nazi conspiration. See sometimes his ex wife was at

(33:02):
the center of the Nazi conspiracy. Sometimes he said she
was a Nazi. Now is this the ex wife whose
daughter he kidnapped? Or is this the one that Polly's
the lucky ex wife she really lucked out by him
just abandoning family. Turns out he's a great guy to
just have a band in you quietly, Yes, if you're
going to be abandoned quietly by the father of your
two children. Make sure I guess there may not be

(33:26):
a message there. There may be no less than any
of this. Commodore. Hubbard continued to run his scientology empire
while he was at sea. He received forty to fifty
telex messages every day from various scientology facilities. He got
weekly reports about the religions income. He told his sea
orc each of whom earned ten dollars a week, that
his income was even less than theirs. But he was

(33:47):
actually receiving about fifteen thousand dollars a week in church funds,
as well as an undisclosed amount of money from various
show corporations and bank accounts in Switzerland and Lichtenstein. His
estimated net worth at death was around six dred million,
to give you some idea of how much money he
built out of this faith. And each of the members
on these ships was earning what did you say, ten
dollars a week a week, Oh well, it's not slavery then, right,

(34:10):
it's not slavery. If they're making ten dollars a week, yeah,
they're he's better wages in the US prison system, does
it yeah, okay, well, okay, that's not bad. I mean no,
it's it's all bad. Everything's bad, everything's horrible, Welcome to
this podcast. However, and his wife each had a stateroom

(34:32):
and a suite on the promenade deck of their big cruiser.
There were several separate offices and rooms that were all
only for the family. The family had a special chef
and their own food, separate from the rest of the crew,
who lived in dorms that are generally described as smelly
and cockroach field. Those who weren't lucky enough to have
a private room slept in giant communal dorms oft d people. Yeah, oh,

(34:55):
a hundred people in one yea room, one big old room.
Sometimes not a lot to bathe because they've all done
something bad. So a hundred people not able to bathe
working on a boat in the heat of the day
for weeks at a time because they're in doubt or whatever,
because they're in yeah, in doubt or non existence or whatever. Whatever.
The fun condition sounds gross. Sounds like a gross boat, right, Yeah,
that sounds horrifying. Now, in all fairness, you can find

(35:19):
recollections of this time from people who were there and
say it was very happy period. There's a lot of
negative there are also some people who loved it. I
found one such account on a site called Scientolopedia, which
appears to be an independent but scientologist run Wikipedia page
a good source of reliable I don't know about that,
Like it's certainly not unbiased. But I also think it
would be impossible for all these people to have stayed

(35:41):
if they weren't enjoying parts of it. And everyone says
there were parts of it that were fun, and there
must have been some people who liked this, people with
better job. Sure, because the guy that I found, Ian
Robert Waxler, was like Hubbard's personal chef for a while
and essentially that was one of the things he did.
But he had a private room on the same deck
that Hubbard had, so it seems like it was a
nice time for him. He was living with people in

(36:02):
the same no stink belts, all right. He says there
were a lot of really good parties, which maybe there were.
He claims Hubbard's cabin was small and unair conditioned. Hubbard
was a small old man sacrificing his comfort for the
goodness of his faith. I have to tell you I
feel a sense of sadness and humility when I think
of looking at the small, barren, steel walled cabin when

(36:22):
he could have very easily been living in a luxurious
villa surrounded by servants. This was not at all l
R H's priority. That he spent any of his later
years in nicer palm Springs type residences would surely be
expected for even a moderately successful person in California. So
he also stated that he was, you know, Hubbard's personal chef,
and he noted that Hubbard was not at all demanding.
He was modest and humble. But he also says he

(36:43):
could be somewhat eccentric, appearing as for example, the only
dish detergents allowed must not have any aroma or any
strong center perfume. If his dishes are clothes were watched
in such the odor became offensive to his keen sense
of smell. In addition, you better not cut up his
food with a knife used to cut an onion, because
l R. H would have immediately let you know, Okay,
So it sounds like he really was kind of so

(37:03):
he was in a past life a bassett hound. Because
it smells, I guess I mean, he clearly didn't have
trouble making everyone else be really gross and smelling. I
don't I can't really parse together what was going on
his head for that. Well, we'll get back to uh,
actually when we get back, when we talk about the
commodore Is Messenger Organization, which was the preteen girls who

(37:24):
oh I can't wait. Oh yeah he did with that,
you know what, less horrifying than you're gonna think. Way
weirder though, yeah, but not in a sex way. Yeah,
real whip flash moment for you, Caitlin. I'm gonna let
you do our ad pivot because all right, hey, folks,
check out this ad and then and then we'll be

(37:45):
back in a moment. We're back. We just broke for ads,
but in reality, we went to a boat, sailed around
the world, found some gold, lost it. Real whirlwind, But
now we're back. Starting in nineteen seventy, l Ron Hubbard
established the Commodore's Messenger Organization. The messengers were the most

(38:08):
faithful and dedicated scientologists. They basically moved around the ship
acting as the Commodore's voice. According to Bare Face Messiah,
the messengers, mainly pubescent girls, soon recognized and enjoyed their
power as teenage clones of the Commodore and their cute
little dark blue uniforms and gold lanyards. They were trained
to deliver Hubbard's orders using his exact words and tone
of voice. If he was in a temper and bellowing abuse,

(38:28):
the messenger would scuffle off and pipe the same abuse
at the offender. No one dared take issue with whatever
a messenger said, no one dared disobey her orders. Vested
with the authority of the Commodore, they came to be
widely feared little monsters. Okay, yeah, so what's it called?
Like the singing Grahams, Like when you're like on Valentine's Day,
they're like, here's a nice song, and we sing you

(38:50):
some chocolates, flowers, telegram sing something like that. Yeah, I
forget what they're called. Maybe I'm making this up. Maybe
I'm l Ron Hubbard and I'm just inventing stuff in there.
But um, so it's like that, but pret like teen
girls who are just like screaming in imitating. Yeah, weird,

(39:12):
hollot him that now like a scientologist. It's just it
takes so it's so hard to say. El Ron Hubbard
over and over. It's too many. Also, every time I
hear l Ron I things and like the Council of
Elrond and very different characters, very different characters. Actually, Elrond
did create all those elves at Rivendell where it was

(39:37):
lost in the woods. What woods Org? Woods Org? If
only it had been a woods Org. So messengers worked
in six hour shifts, and Hubbard was surrounded by them
every hour of every day. They kept minute to minute
logs of his life from this point on. When he
was asleep, they sat outside his stateroom. When he smoked cigarettes,
they caught his ashes. They also took down every mess Anyway,
we have a lot of data on Ron Hubbard as

(39:59):
a result of these people. Okay, has that quote noted?
Many of these messengers, maybe most of them were teenage girls. Uh.
Dorene Smith was twelve when she joined the Apollo. She'd
been born into the faith, and Derene pretty quickly became
a messenger. She and other messengers interviewed were insistent that
while male members of the crew did repeatedly try to
have sex with him, Hubbard never did. Oh yeah, when

(40:21):
I heard that he had a bunch of preteen girls
doing his every bidding on his boat in international waters.
I was like, oh, he's just molesting the hell out
of some kids. I can't find any evidence of that. Okay,
it's weird, like you would, yeah, that's incur But then
also the fact they're like, yeah, but every other man
of course, creepy ship went on. I guess he was

(40:44):
not the kind of creepy you'd expect, which is again
one of the reasons why you get a little bit
more into this guy, because he's not molesting tons of children,
which is reason to really respect the hell out of him.
It's not even doing the minimum, it's like doing below
the minimum. Right, Well, he wasn't a child molester. Kidnapped

(41:05):
a baby once, but he didn't try to have sex
with any preteen. Keith Ranieri of Nexium both molested, allegedly
a twelve year old and kidnapped a couple of babies.
So boys, let that be a lesson to the creepy
cult leaders listening in. If you want to create a cult,
you can be a monster. Just don't molest. That's not

(41:27):
a good message. I should stop trying to find messages
in this story. Speaking of messages, let's talk about the
messenger some more so. Dorene later said in an interview.
I once asked him why he chose young girls as messengers.
He said it was an idea he had picked up
from Nazi Germany. Okay, whirlwind, he said. Hitler was a madman,

(41:48):
but nevertheless a genius in his own right, and the
Nazi youth was one of the smartest ideas he ever had.
With young people, you had a blank slate and you
could write anything you wanted on it, and it would
be your writing. That was his idea, to take young
people and mold them too little hubbards. He said he
had girls because women were more loyal than men. Oh yeah,
you know, women be loyal, Women be loyal. When I
think of loyalty, I think of a teenage girl. Yeah,

(42:11):
the most loyal, never, you know, telling secrets behind anyone's
backs or anything like that. Almost as loyal as teenage boy. Well,
you wouldn't want teenage boys to be your messengers. Another messenger,
a girl named Tanya, insisted he never tried anything with me,
and as far as I know, he never did with
any of the other girls. He didn't sleep with Mary Sue.
We thought perhaps he was impotent. I think he got

(42:31):
his thrills just by having us around. So maybe there
was something gross going on and he just couldn't get
it up anymore. Maybe he would have molested kids. Wait,
is Mary Sue his his wife? Yes? Their wife, alright,
so it's possible. That's another theory that he totally would
have molested these kids, but his dick was broken. Well
you know when your brain is just so creative and

(42:53):
filled with such wonderful stories and another part of your
body is going to be compromised exactly, So, yeah, that
makes why Stephen King is famously terrible at sex, although again,
Ron Hubbard decent at fucking I get yeah, for a while,
but we've heard that from what one account? One account, Okay,
so that's not enough to convince me. Yeah, that's one
account more than most cult leaders have. Well that's true,

(43:14):
that's true, all right. Whatever the case, he had apparently
lost that ability at this point. It is kind of
weird that in this me Too era, the one guy
that I can't find a story of sexually assaulting unwilling
people is fucking l Ron Hubbard. Surprisingly shockingly, yes, I
really would have expected him to be top of that list,

(43:35):
especially because he was teaching men how to rape their
wives while they slept. That like, cannot in the clear
on this, but there's so much research to doing this. Guy,
I may have just missed something, but I am unaware
doing that particular terrible thing, which is shocking to me.
That said, I do want to note, well, I didn't
find any allegations of horrific child sexual abuse. I did

(43:58):
find allegations of horrific child abuse. And l Ron Hubbard
Space Navy Zina dot Net, an admittedly anti scientology, side,
has collected several anecdotes from people who were on these voyages,
including one from Hannah Eltringham. She says, quote, HE put
this little four and a half year old boy, Derek Green,
into the chain locker for two days and two nights.
It's a closed metal container. It's wet, it's full of

(44:18):
water and seaweed. It smells bad. But David was sitting
up on the chain in this place, on his own,
in the dark for two days and two nights. He
was not allowed to go to the potty. I mean
he had to go in the chain locker on his own,
soil himself. He was given food and I never went
near it. The chain locker while he was in there,
but people heard him crying. That is sheer, total brutality.
That is child abuse. Oh yeah, it's definitely child abuse. Again,

(44:40):
he's a monster. Yeah. I assume there were other kids
that happened to. This is just one story of he
had a room for locking up children. That was this
on the Apollo or the Scott I think this is
the Apollo. Was the scotman. I know there's a lot
of names here. There was a mysterious death aboard the Apollo.
I'm surprised there weren't a lot more. In February of

(45:02):
nineteen seventy one, Susan Meister, a twenty three year old
scientologist from Colorado, joined the Apollo. On May five, she
wrote an eager letter home to her family. I just
had an auditing session. I feel great, great, great, and
my life is expanding, expanding, and it's all scientology. Hurry up, hurry, hurry,
be a friend to yourselves. Get into the stuff now.
It's more precious than gold. It's the best thing that's
ever ever, ever, ever, ever come along. Love Susan. Roughly

(45:24):
a month later, on June fifte she wrote another letter
clearly influenced by Ron's paranoia. I can't tell you exactly
where we are. We have enemies who do not wish
to see a succeed in restoring freedom and self determination
to this planet's people, and these people were to find
out where we were located, they would attempt to destroy us.
On June, ten days after that letter, she locked herself
into cabin and shot herself on the head with the

(45:44):
twenty two caliber revolver. She was found later that day
in her bunk, wearing address her mother at center. As
a birthday gift, she wrote a letter, but we don't
know what it said because it went up in the
church's possession Along with her body. They buried her in
Monaco before her father could arrive. Hubbard went into damage
control mode. The church's official stance was that Susan was
a drug addict with a history of suicide attempts, and
also they said they found naked photos that she'd taken,

(46:05):
so clearly she was an unstable individual. Pretty classic, it's
her fault. She had a naked picture of herself, It's
her fault. In early nineteen seventy two, l Ron got sick.
This may have had something to do with the fact
that he had spent years living in boats and not
seeking any regular medical or dental care. Scurvy, he's drinking.
He's a drunk old man who lives on a boat

(46:25):
and doesn't go to doctors. He had health problems, and yeah,
I'm surprised there weren't more deaths because I mean he's
throwing people overboard on a base. There weren't more death
right unless they were and they just got completely covered up.
That's possible or something. I'm only aware of this one,
but you know, I can only do so much reading.
The Apollo's medical officer was a guy named in Kalki

(46:47):
with six months of nursing experience under his belt, so
there wasn't a lot of great medical care on board
the Apollo. When he got the gig and started working
closely with Hubbard, he was surprised to learn that L. R.
H had started seeing a doctor during port visits and
had started taking painkill and antibiotics. I thought that as
an operating theat and he would have total control of
his body and of any pain. When he discovered I
hadn't got him the painkillers, he flew off the handle

(47:08):
and started screaming at me. So this guy like learned
that he didn't get all the pain killers that Hubbard
had asked for because he was like, what does need
pain killers? He's total control of his body. So Hubbard
got angry at him because he didn't need pain killers.
Morocco was Hubbard's favorite place in the early nineteen seventies.
He set his sights on it as a possible worldwide
headquarters for his new faith. But then he was mildly
implicated in a failed attempt to unseat the Moroccan king,

(47:30):
and again his fleet had to flee to the open ocean.
Cheese tailors oldest time. So while all this is happening,
while he's at sea for years, years, eight years, Scientology
is still spreading on land, right, and he's managing it
from a telex machine on his boat somewhere in the ocean. Okay,
got it. In the mid nineteen seventy two, the French

(47:51):
government launched an investigation into the Church of Scientology while
several of their ships were docked for engine repairs. In
a panic, Hubbard fled to the east coast of the
United States and spent ten months in a New Jersey
hotel watching daytime TV and drinking way too much brandy
kind of sounds fun. Uh. He saw a doctor in
a dentist though. Yeah, okay, so he's finally getting medical
attention for his scurvy. Then his rotten teeth. His teeth

(48:13):
were real fucked up. When he returned to his fleet
ten months later, he seemed to be in much better health.
But in late nineteen l Ron Hubbard had a motorcycle
accident in the Canary Islands. Just what the funk was
a man that age doing right in a motorcycler. His
good mood disappeared. He began instituting new punishments again and
created a whole new unit for scientologist who are being punished.

(48:33):
The Rehabilitation Project Force was a shocking development to many
Sea Org members. One of them, Hannah Altringham, recalled that
it sounded pretty much like a slave labor camp to her.
Those weren't the words he used, but that was the
impression given where the unwanted, those found wanting, seriously wanting,
were sent and they were to be kept in this
with no rights, no freedoms, no privileges of any kind.
Pretty much, the only rights they were allowed was a

(48:53):
little bit of sleep each day. Food leftovers, the harshest treatment.
So he builds a task force full of peno list
people where they all have to work. They all to
wear black cover rolls basically over their whole body, and
like the heat of the day in the Mediterranean summer,
they all slipped together in the cargo hold with no ventilation. Yeah.
So the RPF became the place nobody wanted to be

(49:15):
in the place that you went if you annoyed the
commodore or if you annoyed his messengers, because they had
the right to send you to RPF. Two. So there
were a bunch of twelve year old girls who could
just throw people in scientology prison if they got angry.
Respect that, you know. Women in charge? Good? Yeah, great, Yeah,
not just women in charge, girls in charge. Small children, yes,
small children charge. Taking it back. One crewman at this

(49:38):
time remembers about Ron Hubbard. After the accident, he became
much more paranoid and belligerent. He was convinced there were
evil people on board with hidden evil intentions, and he
wanted to get them all in the RPF. The RPF
was used as an incredible daily threat over everyone. If
he could smell something cooking from the Vince whoever was
the current Vince engineer would be assigned to the RPF
if the cook burned his food RPF, if a messenger

(49:59):
complained about someone RPF. His actions definitely became more bizarre
after the motorcycle accident. You could hear him throughout the
ships screaming, shouting, ranting, and raving. Day after day. He
was always claiming the cooks were trying to poison him,
and he began to smell odors everywhere. His clothes had
to be washed in pure water fifteen times, using thirteen
different buckets of clean water to rinse the shirt so
he wouldn't smell a detergent on it. So his behavior

(50:21):
somehow became more erratic and unreasonable after this motorcycle accident.
Someone who's doing what he had already been doing, How
does it get worse from there? But I just can't
even chronic pain. Yeah, Like you're already a crazy off
balance guy and then you're dealing with chronic pains. Become

(50:41):
more of an asshole. Yeah, I mean it's all, but
it's already like dialed up to an eleven. Like I
don't know how you get worse from there. But it's incredible.
But his life is like a perpetual motion machine of
just being shittier, because that's the only thing he ever
does is get worse. It's almost impressive. Yeah, he's like
a mountaineer for being a piece of garbage, like climbing

(51:03):
the mount Everest, of being shitty to the people around him.
Some crewmen, including Jim Dinkalki, the guy who had worked
as his doctor basically even though he's only a nurse,
saw the RPF as a reaction to Hubbard's realization that
his son Quentin, who had been largely raised at sea
by this point, was homosexual. Dinklki said, human emotion reactions
is the way humans were, and he didn't specifically regard
humans very highly. He liked the idea of the dull

(51:26):
bodies that were in other civilizations. Dull bodies didn't have
human emotions and reactions. They were I guess like Spock,
you know, just very analytical. You just get the job done.
No emotion there. Love is not a sentiment that's known
or cared for. And to me, that's the tragedy because
he put that, I feel, into the organization, into the
way of being in the organization. He saw his son's
homosexuality as a betrayal, and his son Quentin eventually killed

(51:47):
himself years after this, so he saw it as an
attack and that may have been what made him punish
everyone else on the boats. As the voyage went on,
Hubbard's often teenaged messengers grew to hold all of the
power on board. They also had the ability to force
people into the RPF. As I had stated, multi people
compared it to like a Lord of the Flyes sort
of situation. In the last couple of years of the crew,

(52:07):
just these kind of crazed teenage girls, because again, they're
spending all of their time around the craziest man who's
ever lived, and they have ultimate power and their twelve
So it's just bad. Yeah. And a lot of them
grew up in the church and then yeah, possibly also
on this boat. Yeah yeah. At this point they've spent
their whole lives in the church. They're just completely detached

(52:28):
from reality living on a boat in the ocean with
total power. It went mad. He did, however, get sick
of this in nineteen seventy five and he came ashore
in Florida. Uh he said it was because he needed
his flag base to be on dry land in order
to more efficiently built money out of people. He called
his ship the Apollo Flag as well, and the Scientology
headquarters is called Flag. Now it's possible that he was

(52:50):
just too old and infirm to stay at sea. For
whatever reason. In August of nineteen seventy five, he launched
Operation gold Mine, a plan to buy numerous hotels and
churches in and around the town of Clearwater, Florida, in
order to establish it as a Scientology mecca, because you know,
Florida is the one piece of land beyond the reach
of all man's laws. I had intended originally to go
into his whole life in this podcast. He has another

(53:13):
eleven years. We'll get to that at some point. The
end of l Ron Hubbard is another story because he
hasn't even started making movies. He has all this other
insane shit happens. Yeah, Okay, it gets so much wilder.
But this is the end of his time at sea,
and this is all the time we have to talk
about Ron Hubbard this week. Wow, what a journey it's been. Yeah.

(53:37):
I feel like I was a part of Sea Org
for eight years. Yeah, that's what it. Well, now you
can understand a little bit of how those people suffered. Yeah, yes,
my three hours of being on this podcast is definitely
compares um. Wow. Wow, that was so unch information. I

(54:02):
am stupefied. That is the right reaction to all of this,
l Ron Hubbard. There we go. Okay, well that's the story.
I got nothing else again, So to recap, he's a
feminist icon, feministic mining for gold, gold miner, et Ron Hubbard.
He loves boats. He defeated two Japanese submarines which were

(54:25):
just deposits of iron, ores of iron, and he generally
treated everyone around him with respect and uh never told
a lie in his life. Okay, yeah, honest man, Ron Hubbard.
Wow yeah, all right, Well, thank you so much. Thanks

(54:47):
for having Thank you for talking about this fucking cuckoo crazy.
I've had fun. Good. I feel a little mad, like
like crazy like madness is sleeping in. I'm gonna drive
to Marina del Rey, break onto a boat and just
drink all night. Yeah, it sounds like a great plan.

(55:07):
It sounds like a great plan. You can call me commodore.
Why not call yourself admiral? Also, well, it seems like
a cooler name. Yeah, is one like a higher ranking
than the other. I think commodore might be higher than animal.
I don't even know. I don't think we have Commodore's
and our right, but I don't know. I don't know.
He decided Commodore sounded cooler. I get yeah, l ron

(55:31):
Hubbard Ron Yes plugs. You can follow me on social
media Twitter and Instagram and the like at Caitlin Dronte
spelled c a I t l I n d u
r A n t E. You can listen to my
podcast PacTel Cast spelled b e c h d e L.

(55:54):
We talked about the portrayal of women in film when
you can follow that on Twitter at atle cast and uh,
I do comedy shows and stuff like that, so um
check out my website Caitlin Dronte dot com and to
see my upcoming show dates and other than that, you
can find me at my new cult that I'm starting. Also,

(56:16):
for anyone who's keeping track of my name anagrams, maybe
perhaps fans of the Daily Zeitgeist or or of bectal
Cast already, you might know that my name anagrams to
a bunch of stuff, including trained in a cult oh cool, Yes, nice.
So there you have it. Well, I'm Robert Evans. This
has been Behind the Bastards. If you want to support

(56:38):
this show and give me the money that I need
to buy my own navy and sailor around the Caribbean.
No child abuse this time, some elder abuse. Uh. You
can buy our t shirts on t public dot com.
Behind the Bastards we have I love for shirts. We
have DJ Stalin shirts. Buy them up. I'm sure we'll
get an out around Hubbard good at sex shirt up

(56:59):
in there soon. It seems like a great idea to me.
You can also find us on Twitter and Instagram at
at Bastard's Pod. You can find us online and Behind
the Bastard's dot com. You can find me on Twitter
at I right, okay, We've got a book, a brief
history advice. Buy it. I'm just so tired right now,
We're all very tired. I love about h