Mary Sue Hubbard - Life at Sea

Life At Sea

During the late 1960s, Scientology was faced by an increasingly hostile media and intensifying government scrutiny in a number of countries, notably Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States. Hubbard decided to take to the high seas in a bid to liberate Scientology from the attentions of hostile governments. On November 22, 1966, the Hubbard Explorational Company Limited was formed with Hubbard and Mary Sue as directors – Hubbard being described as expedition supervisor and Mary Sue as company secretary. Several second-hand ships were purchased to serve as the quarters of the newly-created "Sea Org". The flagship of the Scientology fleet was the 3,280 ton vessel Royal Scotsman – accidentally renamed the Royal Scotman due to a clerical error, a former cattle ferry on the Irish Sea run.

After the vessel had been renovated by Scientologists, Mary Sue and the children moved into the upper-deck accommodation in November 1968. The difference in the quality of living conditions between the Hubbards and the crew was stark:

Most of the crew lived in cramped, smelly, roach-infested dormitories fitted with bunks in three tiers that left little room for personal possessions. Hubbard and Mary Sue each had their own state-rooms in addition to a suite on the promenade deck comprising an auditing-room, office, an elegant saloon and a wood-paneled dining-room, all off-limits to students and crew. Hubbard had a personal steward, as did Mary Sue and the Hubbard children, who all had their own cabins. Meals for the Commodore and his family were cooked in a separate galley by their personal chef, using ingredients brought by couriers from the United States.

In April 1969, Mary Sue was promoted by Hubbard to serve as the captain of the Royal Scotman and ordered to cruise up and down the coast of Spain to train the vessel's inexperienced crew of Scientologists, who had made a string of mistakes that infuriated Hubbard. The trip had the air of a punishment detail and was dubbed the "liability cruise"; conditions on board were reportedly appalling. According to Russell Miller, "The crew worked to the point of exhaustion, the food was meager and no one was allowed to wash or change their clothes. Mary Sue enforced the rules rigidly but shared the privations, and was scrupulously fair and popular." The entire crew was forced to wear gray rags to symbolize their demotion; it was said that even Mary Sue's corgi dog, Vixie, had a gray rag tied around her neck. The "liability cruise" ended in June 1969, but punishments for erring crew members became increasingly draconian. The Royal Scotman – now renamed the Apollo, after the Greek god – became the scene of a daily ritual dubbed "overboarding" that was presided over by Hubbard and Mary Sue. Every morning, Scientologists would be thrown over the side of the ship for errors conducted during their daily auditing sessions.

Apart from captaining the Royal Scotman for a period, Mary Sue's duties included managing the sprawling empire of the Guardian's Office agency within the Church of Scientology and serving as the chair of an executive group known variously as the Commodore's Staff Aides, the Aides Council, and the International Board of Scientology Organizations. This body was responsible for overseeing each of the seven organizational subdivisions of the Church of Scientology. She played a central role in the financial management of the Church of Scientology's two principal corporations, the Church of Scientology of California and the United Kingdom Church of Scientology. She was a sole signatory to the Church of Scientology's trust accounts and was also a director of the Operation Transport Corporation (OTC), a company established in 1968 that served as a conduit for cash transfers from the Church of Scientology to L. Ron Hubbard personally; it was characterised by the US Tax Court as a "sham corporation" whose role was the enrichment of the Hubbards. She personally handled large quantities of cash on Hubbard's behalf. In the summer of 1972, Hubbard ordered that around $2 million in cash be transferred from OTC bank accounts in Switzerland to the Apollo, where it was stored for the next three years in a locked file cabinet to which Mary Sue Hubbard had the only set of keys. Her salary was relatively modest, amounting to $30,430 ($150,732 in 2007 prices) between 1970 and 1972, though she did also benefit from tens of thousands of dollars a year in living expenses paid for by the Church of Scientology.

The Hubbards moved ashore in March 1972 after three years traveling aboard their ship from port to port in the Mediterranean. They set up home in a villa on the outskirts of the Moroccan city of Tangier. Their sojourn in Morocco ended abruptly in December 1972 when it became clear that the Church of Scientology was about to be indicted in France for fraud, and that Hubbard himself was potentially at risk of being extradited to stand trial. Hubbard returned to the United States, living under a false name in New York City while Mary Sue and the children remained aboard the Apollo. They were not reunited until September 1973, when the threat of extradition had passed. Hubbard's legal troubles were not yet over; when it became known in October 1974 that the FBI wished to interview him, Mary Sue persuaded her husband to avoid going ashore in the United States and the Apollo spent the next year sailing from port to port in the Caribbean.

The Scientology fleet was finally disbanded in 1975, when Hubbard decided to move ashore and establish a "land base" in Florida. He and Mary Sue moved initially to Daytona Beach, Florida in August 1975. They lived there incognito for a few months before moving into an apartment in Dunedin on the west coast of Florida, a few miles north of the town of Clearwater where a Scientology front company had bought the old Fort Harrison Hotel to serve as Scientology's new headquarters. The presence of the Hubbards was meant to be a secret, but in January 1976 he was recognized by a science fiction fan while on a shopping trip. Fearing arrest, he fled to Washington, D.C. with a handful of aides while Mary Sue was left behind in Florida continuing her day-to-day management activities.

In October 1976, Hubbard's eldest son by Mary Sue, Quentin, committed suicide at the age of 22. Mary Sue was grief-stricken, though she later attempted to persuade friends that Quentin had died from encephalitis. Her husband's reaction was one of fury, blaming Quentin for – in his eyes – letting him down.