The press gang detail attached to this haunting is grounded in genuine and well documented naval practice, forcible impressment a real and widely feared feature of English port life for centuries, which gives Eddie Blake's story a plausible operating context even where his own existence and death cannot be traced to any surviving parish or court record.
A named smuggler ghost tied to a specific historic pub is a common type throughout this wider register's coastal entries, smuggling's genuinely widespread presence along the Devon coast during the 17th and 18th centuries lending broad credibility to this category of story even when, as here, the individual concerned remains otherwise undocumented.
The Minerva's claimed tunnel connections situate it within a wider Barbican tradition of hidden subterranean passages linking the district's older buildings, a tradition this register also records in relation to Tavistock's abbey vaults, though as with most English smugglers' tunnel legends the full extent of any genuine tunnel network beneath the Barbican remains difficult to verify independently.
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