On his return to the United States in 1929, and while launching his literary career as a student at George Washington University, L. Ron Hubbard made his first fully professional appearance as radio WOL’s balladeer. Although no recordings exist, he was said to have entertained listeners with a superbly fine baritone and a Hawaiian ukulele. Through the remainder of the 1930s, he continued performing on a casual basis, but clearly never lost his professional edge, as evidenced by his next radio slot.

To abbreviate a long and adventurous story: The summer of 1940 had found L. Ron Hubbard heading a nautical expedition from his Bremerton, Washington home north through the British Columbian passage to the Alaskan panhandle. The voyage, conducted on behalf of the United States Navy’s Hydrographic Office and aimed at charting treacherous inland waterways, had also taken LRH deep into native American habitats for ethnological research. Yet landing at the Alaskan port of Ketchikan, and owing to his renown as both author and mariner, he received another invitation to the airwaves.

The station was the Voice of Alaska, radio station KGBU, headed and hosted by local personality Jimmy Britton. The territory’s only chain broadcast facility, radio KGBU, catered to listeners all along the lower Alaskan coast and thus offered several shows for yachtsmen and fisherfolk. L. Ron Hubbard’s slot, entitled “The Mail Buoy,” was typical. Listeners with questions on any and all nautical matters were invited to address their queries to Master Mariner L. Ron Hubbard who would promptly air his replies. But in addition to his very sound advice on the trimming of sails or on-board fire prevention, he also entertained.

Again no recordings were made. Written transcripts, however, offer not only dialogue, but the lyrics of ballads he wrote and performed. Typical is his hauntingly beautiful “Wreck of the Alaskan Chief,” inspired by the loss of a cannery fleet vessel off the rocky Dover shore, and apparently performed with either ukulele or guitar. It is easy enough to imagine the effect of that mellow baritone delivering a verse or two of:

The next to go was A. M. Accue
Fighting as a seaman can
He swam for an hour in the icy sea
And drowned with the shore in scan.

He must have known that the bitter fight
Was against the ebbing tide,
He surely knew but never stopped but swimming,
Sank and died.