NavList:

No. In this case your arguments are quite convincing, as far as they relate to these specific circumstances.

Nonetheless, I object to this apparently now fashionable attitude of decrying dead reckoning as inherently unreliable, as though the very concept only merits contempt.  The baby thrown out with this bathwater is actually the very foundation of our craft.

The skills we esteem so highly; of cel nav etc, are techniques devised to correct the dead reckoning plot, without which we are, quite literally, lost.

George, I'm sorry that I don't have a long and exhaustive list to hand of all the writings on nav and ocean voyaging I've perused over many years, that have given me this idea that navigators took great pains with their ongoing plot of position, using all means available to ensure its accuracy, and how writer after writer was only too happy to point out to the reader how good their plot proved to be when tested by sights; of celestial bodies or a headland at the end of a passage. 

Yes, of course they would have less to say about the more ordinary results! 
And yes, most post date this early period.