Can the ships logs be found on the internet? If so, the model could've manufactured a fake key and corresponding message. I think this is unlikely but should probably still be considered.
> Astra felt compelled to check its work and found that, in fact, the English cruiser HMS Canterbury arrived in Sevastopol on November 24, 1918, based on its original logs
Then follows a picture of the original log papers.
The comment you're replying to was implying that some ciphers are sufficiently flexible that you could make up a key to make the cipher decrypt to a nearly arbitrary plaintext.
In this case, though, that seems unlikely from the fact that the key used was an actual key documented as being used for other messages.
iltk · · focus · HN ↗
stalfie · · focus · HN ↗
> Astra felt compelled to check its work and found that, in fact, the English cruiser HMS Canterbury arrived in Sevastopol on November 24, 1918, based on its original logs
Then follows a picture of the original log papers.
JoshTriplett · · focus · HN ↗
In this case, though, that seems unlikely from the fact that the key used was an actual key documented as being used for other messages.
[deleted] · · focus · HN ↗
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