User:Prioryman/Sea Org

The creation of the Sea Org
The Sea Org was officially established on August 12, 1967 by L. Ron Hubbard – a date that the Church of Scientology still celebrates as "Sea Org Day". Various explanations have been advanced for why Hubbard founded the Sea Org in the first place. According to the Church of Scientology, Hubbard, "having retired from his position as Executive Director International, set [out] to sea with a handful of veteran Scientologists to continue his research into the upper levels of spiritual awareness and ability." Another Church of Scientology source says that "it was formed to assist L. Ron Hubbard with advanced research operations and supervise Church organizations around the world." The sociologist J. Gordon Melton links the foundation of the Sea Org to Hubbard's recent development of the first two Operating Thetan levels – said to liberate latent psychic powers in those who undertook them – in August and September 1966.

Critical writers on Scientology have put forward a different explanation, pointing to the legal and political troubles that Scientology was experiencing at the time in a number of countries. A controversy over Scientology in the State of Victoria, Australia had led to the establishment of a Board of Inquiry. In October 1965 the Board published its findings, the "Anderson Report", which strongly condemned Scientology and L. Ron Hubbard personally. The report caused a sensation in other countries where Scientology was active and similar inquiries were set up in New Zealand, South Africa and the United Kingdom. Hubbard sought to find a friendlier place to base Scientology and initially tried to ingratiate himself with the white supremacist government of that country. However, he was rebuffed and had to leave Rhodesia after a few months. According to John McMaster, a senior Scientologist at the time, Hubbard subsequently told him: "We have got to do something about all this trouble we are having with governments ... Do you realize that 75 per cent of the earth's surface is completely free from the control of any government? That's where we could be free - on the high seas."

The Sea Org originated in late 1966 under the guise of the "Sea Project", begun in great secrecy at Scientology's then world headquarters at Saint Hill Manor in southern England. On October 22, 1966, Hubbard established the "Hubbard Explorational Company Limited" (HEC) for the ostensible purposes "to explore oceans, seas, lakes, rivers and waters, lands and buildings in any part of the world and to seek for, survey, examine and test properties of all kinds." Hubbard listed himself as exploration supervisor and his wife Mary Sue as the company secretary. He persuaded the Explorers Club, of which he was a member, to authorise the flying of its flag on a "Hubbard Geological Survey Expedition", which would survey "a belt from Italy through Greece and Egypt and along the Gulf of Aden and the East Coast of Africa." The intention was to "draw a picture of an area which has been the scene of the earlier and basic civilizations of the planet and from which some conclusions may possibly be made relating to geological predispositions required for civilized growth." The survey never went ahead, but would have served as a useful cover story for Hubbard's venture.

Preparations for the Sea Project's launch were caried out at Saint Hill in the autumn of 1966. In November 1966, a notice appeared briefly on the Saint Hill noticeboard asking for volunteers who had nautical experience. Those who signed up were instructed to practice nautical tasks such as using dinghies on the manor's lake or learning how to read navigation charts and to tie knots. Most of them had little or no nautical experience; Virginia Downsborough, who went on to captain one of the Sea Org's vessels, recalled that at that stage "the Sea Project was just a few of us who would get together in the garage and learn how to tie knots and read a pilot. I bought a little sailing boat and sailed it at weekends, but that was about it."

At about the same time, the HEC bought its first ship – a 40-ton yacht called the Enchanter – and soon afterwards acquired an old North Sea trawler, the Avon River. Both vessels were based at Hull. In the New Year of 1967 the Enchanter sailed from Hull to Las Palmas in the Canary Islands with a hired skipper and a crew of four Scientologists. Hubbard went there by air instead. He lived for several months in a rented villa near Las Palmas, where he developed Operating Thetan level III (OT III), "the Wall of Fire". He claimed that it "revealed the secrets of a disaster which resulted in the decay of life as we know it in this sector of the galaxy" (a reference to the ancient genocide said to have been perpetrated by Xenu).

The Avon River sailed from Hull in April 1967 under the command of Captain John Jones, a non-Scientologist, with a crew of 20 Scientologists and a non-Scientologist chief engineer. He later told the Daily Mirror that it had been "the strangest trip of my life". The Scientologist crew was so inexperienced that its members "wouldn't know a trawler from a tramcar". The captain was instructed not to use his radar and other navigational equipment and was told to instead use The Org Book, a sailing manual written by Hubbard, which was to be "obeyed without question". This did not go to plan and the Scientologist navigator, following Hubbard's instructions, managed to lose his way after about a hundred miles. The ship eventually reached Las Palmas for a refit so that she could be used for the delivery of Scientology courses.

More Scientologists volunteered to join the still-secret Sea Project in Las Palmas and were given "shore stories", or cover stories, to conceal the involvement of Scientology. They presented themselves instead as employees of the HEC working on archaeological research. The HEC was secretly financed by the Church of Scientology of California to the tune of $15,000 a month. In November 1967 the HEC spent £60,000 to acquire the Royal Scotsman, a 3,280-ton former Irish Sea cattle ferry that was laid up at Aberdeen. The company asked the Board of Trade, which was responsible for ship licensing, to re-register the vessel as a "pleasure yacht" but was informed that considerable modifications would be required to meet safety regulations. The Royal Scotsman was moved to Southampton and a second attempt was made to re-register it, this time as a "whaling ship". The request was refused and a detention order was placed on the ship. To get around this, Hubbard had the ship re-registered under the flag of convenience of Sierra Leone and in the process accidentally rechristened it as the Royal Scotman due to a spelling error.

Hubbard took personal charge of an operation to move the ship some 200 mi to the French port of Brest, with twenty Scientologists crewing the vessel. The effort nearly ended in disaster; the ship sailed into a fierce storm in the English Channel and nearly foundered off Brest. Hubbard decided to make for the British colony of Gibraltar instead, over 1000 mi away. The Royal Scotman arrived with its main steering and compass damaged and inoperative but was refused entry, and had to travel hundreds of miles further to dock at Monaco for repairs. She travelled a circuitous course around the Mediterranean over the next few weeks, with those aboard reduced to eating soup made with seawater, before finally arriving at Valencia in Spain