Snow: There is much that is wrong with his story, yet when errors are pointed out to him he blithely sails through them at his own pace.
That aside, he has read his subject well and has spread into other topics of conversation, almost like the TT thing is an afterthought and he has just popped out for a bag of sugar. Whoops, here I am 200 years later.
This one has me up in the air. His responses to your incredible knowledge of naval history and the Chesapeake in particular are quite good. But, really the only things that make me think he could be the real deal are his mode of speech, his politeness, and his patience. These aren't things you find a great deal of in everyday life these days.
I'd say that he's either the real thing or a pretty good writer who is used to doing quite a bit of research into his stories.
Sometimes the best way to tell is the response time to questions: a bbs like this is way different then the undernet in some room where you can clock some ones response time(is he looking up things on the internet?) or if you are real lucky, you hit on the web site that he has hit on and you can spot the info verbatim / word for word.