I'm sorry, but I feel that you’re doing exactly what you’re criticising others for doing, and you’re ignoring evidence from Wilkins himself, even from his books, apparently because it doesn’t suit your thinking!
The map on the inside page of Wilkins’ book
is based on a 17th century chart of Juan Fernandez, and this can be demonstrated by the overall outline and the presence of ‘Goat Hills’ in
exactly the same location and also, very unusually, a scharfes ‘S’ in the word ‘False’ the original being accompanied by an anchor and the 'copy' with the word ‘Anchorage’ signifying the same thing. We also have ‘Hunters Gulley’ and ‘Death Valley’ in much the same location, as below.
View attachment 2219519
At left above is an image of the original 17th century chart. It may be deduced that Wilkins, having observed that Palmer’s maps reference Rocks, a Lagoon and Sand and Coral, then adjusted his copy map of Juan Fernandez to suit. Juan Fernandez has no coral reefs and no desert, but the fact that Wilkins added these does not mean that this is not the island upon which he based his outline.
The same argument can be applied to the map on the book’s endpapers. Wilkins’ second map has the same outline as the first and the same features in the same locations: the Lagoon and Coral banks. Some of the text is also the same: Cape Blanco, Mar Del, Galleon Wrecks and Lat.dmd.
Thus, being so similar to the first, one might safely observe that the second map is intended to depict the same island - that is, Juan Fernandez. The fact that the compass roses are different doesn’t necessarily mean that they are completely different islands.
Wilkins was fully aware that the maps’ owners believed this to be the island the instructions pertained to and thereafter picked on a 17th century chart of the island, based on the 1669 date referenced by the Palmer maps, not knowing that the group had selected the island’s outline from an 18th century chart as below:
View attachment 2219520
This might be recognised as Palmer’s ‘Coral Island Map’ but without the Lagoon and Coral Bank, though those not wishing to concede the possibility will inevitably declare that it is definitely not so. It should be noted that neither chart of Juan Fernandez is particularly accurate, though the one above is the closer of the two.
This aside, the outline of the Key Chart or Skeleton Map doesn’t fit this profile particularly well, though the map from which it was drawn doesn’t either. The outline of the map from which the instructions were taken actually appears in Wilkins book
Captain Kidd and His Skeleton Island for which see (Wilkins,1934, p345) or (Wilkins,1937, p383) where he presents it as ‘John S’s Rough Map’.
View attachment 2219522
This matches the outline of Oak Island as Gloucester Isle from an 18th century chart by J.F.W Des Barres (as do the maps containing Wilkins' instructions that I saw). Note the distinctive inlet at northwest, the two apparent ‘rivers’ in exactly the same locations and the promontory in the form of a bulb at east.
So, what was Wilkins doing including a map of Oak Island in a book about Kidd and the Kidd maps and then asking his readers to identify it for him? He desperately wanted to know where the island was, because he knew that this was the island to which the instructions actually apply!
Despite what’s being claimed here, the instructions may therefore equally have first appeared on maps of Oak Island, though the outline looked very little like what it does today. As the island was not initially identified, it was thereafter assumed that it was Juan Fernandez, though for a number of questionable reasons.
So, the instructions were written onto copies of an 18th century chart of that island thus giving rise to the Palmer maps. Wilkins simply chose to put the instructions that he obtained from the very same source onto his version of a chart of the same island, but as depicted in the 17th century. In this event, the instructions on all the maps, including the Flood Map, would not apply to the island depicted.
