I'm wondering...has anyone ever gone through, I mean, *really* gone through, the Alexander Spotswood papers? I'm assuming that Maynard, blast his eyes, would have delivered up any ship's logs he may have found to the Governor, along with the papers incriminating Tobias Knight, et al...
Or, considering Blackbeard's ship at the time was the sloop Adventure, and not the Queen Anne's Revenge, would he still have logs dealing with the QAR just laying about, as it were?
Inquiring minds want to know...
I resemble that remark!
No, Johnson's far from perfect, and I've never yet read a book on pirate history that I couldn't pick some hole in or other, including my own.
Is Blackbeard's journal entry authentic? It doesn't seem right to me, but I realise what a terrible basis that is for an argument. If Blackbeard's journal had survived then it would most likely have been stored in the records office at Williamsburg VA, which suffered several fires before anyone really thought to look there for Blackbeard related stuff. Maynard doesn't mention finding a journal specifically, but he is known to have recovered several documents from the Adventure, which conceivably could have included the journal. Of course, even if Maynard did recover Blackbeard's journal it doesn't follow that Johnson really quoted from it. I will say this however, the Blackbeard journal entry is the only journal "quoted" in the GHP, and if any pirates' journal was likely to have survived it would have been Blackbeard's (because we do know that other incriminating documents were recovered from his ship). I don't believe it myself, but I'm not prepared to rule it out.