Fact is: this picture matches up with the stamps that were issued in the 1980s about the capture & a lot of the eyewitness accounts. The plane that we see being towed is 38 feet long...same as the Earhart plane. I would not be so quick to discount this.
And another thing. They were taking radio bearings which can travel hundreds of miles over open ocean if the mast is high enough. It makes sense they’d home into whatever was in range when they calculated their remaining fuel - distance. A port would have a high mast-mounted VHF radio for ship communications which would carry much further than airport or ship borne radio. Ergo, if their destination radio signal was not received they would head for what was available such as a port’s VHF.