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Picture Expedition," renting a four-masted schooner and planning a
voyage with fifty other students to sixteen Caribbean ports of call at
which they would make adventure movies.
However, the trip did not turn out as planned. A storm at sea drove
the sailing ship off course and they ended up in Bermuda instead of
Martinique. After leaving Bermuda, the fresh water leaked out of the
tanks, morale on the ship was at an ebb, and when the ship did finally
reach Martinique, most of the disgruntled crew abandoned the ship for
home. The ship's owners, realizing that their fee was at risk, ordered
the ship back to Baltimore where the trip had begun.
Although Ron was later to claim the trip as a great success, citing
among its scientific accomplishments that rare specimens of flora and
fauna were gathered for the University of Michigan, that underwater
films were taken for the U.S. Hydrographic Office, and that photographs
of the trip were purchased by the New York Times, subsequent
investigation has proven that none of these things were true.
Ron returned to Washington, D.C. to receive his grades for the
previous semester which were: a B in English, Ds in calculus, electrical
and magnetic physics, and Fs in molecular and atomic physics. Realizing
he was fighting a losing battle, he informed his parents that he would
not be returning to college.
His father's solution to his son's educational failure was to send
him on a trip to Puerto Rico, where the Red Cross was looking for
volunteers. Ron used the trip to search for gold in the Puerto Rican
countryside, working briefly as a field representative for a company
called West Indies Minerals.
In spite of his failure at school, Hubbard later frequently boasted
that he had been a student in the first course in atomic physics in the
country and that he had received an honorary Ph.D. -- which he renounced
much later when it was discovered and made public that the bogus degree
had been purchased from from a diploma mill in California.
The official biography of Hubbard continues:
His first action on leaving college was to blow off steam by leading
an expedition into Central America. In the next few years he headed
three, all of them undertaken to study savage peoples and cultures to
provide fodder for his articles and stories. Between 1933 and 1941 he
visited many barbaric cultures and yet found time to write seven million
words of published fact and fiction. (8)
Although there is no evidence that Hubbard made any trips to Central
America, there is evidence that when he arrived back in Washington, D.C.
from Puerto Rico, he married Mary Louise Grubb, nicknamed "Polly," and
began his career as a struggling writer.
In 1933, he sold four articles, receiving less than a hundred
dollars for all, the rate of pay for pulp fiction writers at the time
being a penny a word.
In 1934, his first child was born, a son named L. Ron Jr., and to
keep pace with the rising expenses of a young family man, Hubbard began
to produce fiction at a prolific rate, often writing
a story a day. His writing habits were unique. He would frequently write
all night long, retiring at dawn and sleeping until the early afternoon.
Soon, this labor began to pay off, as more and more of his fictions
were published, and Hubbard began to acquire a reputation among
adventure writers. In 1935, his output included ten pulp novels, three
novelettes, twelve short stories, and three non-fiction articles. The
titles of his stories included: "The Phantom Patrol," "Destiny's Drum,"
"Man-Killers of the Air," "Hostage to Death," and "Hell's Legionnaires."
(9)
Another child arrived in 1936, a daughter, Catherine. Hubbard moved
his small family to Bremerton, Washington, where his parents had
settled, and where Ron and Polly bought a small house. Hubbard spent the
next few years shuttling between Bremerton and New York City, where he
made frequent trips to fraternize with fellow adventure writers. In
gatherings with other writers, Hubbard was invariably the center of
attention, entertaining the others present with his yarns and tall
tales.
In 1938, John Campbell, the editor of Astounding Science
Fiction magazine, persuaded Ron to try his hand at science fiction.
The result was successful and Hubbard's stories in this genre began to
appear regularly, alongside his regular adventure stories and westerns.
During this same year, there is a curious story about Hubbard. He
apparently began to tell friends that he had written an important book,
called Excalibur, which he claimed would have a greater impact on
people than the Bible. He seemed quite excited about this book. He told
his wife that it would earn him a place in history. Yet, strangely, no
one ever saw the book.
Hubbard claimed that the first six people who read the book were so
overwhelmed by its contents that they went out of their minds. He
claimed that the inspiration for the book came from an out of the body
experience he had under nitrous oxide while at the dentist. To prevent