He seems to have fallen over board too:
Rescue crews searched the Chesapeake Bay for a prominent publisher and diplomat Sunday, hours after his sailboat was discovered empty in the water with the engine still running.
The Coast Guard dispatched a C-130 aircraft, a helicopter and a boat to assist in the search for 72-year-old Philip Merrill, who had been sailing alone Saturday.
Senior Chief Steve Carleton said the Coast Guard was operating under the assumption that Merrill fell overboard.
“When we found the boat, the engine was running and his wallet was found on board the vessel,” he said.
Ken Turner, a spokesman for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources police, said Saturday night that two boaters found Merrill’s unoccupied 41-foot sailboat.
Philip Merrill (who adopted his cousin’s last name years ago because he was ashamed of his real surname, feeling it was “too Jewish”) was a well-known egotistical bully who came by his riches in an unknown manner while working at a low-paying government job. His Annapolis newspaper was frequently caught plagiarizing whole articles from the Washington Post and the Baltimore Sun, and locals knew all too well that nothing reported in the paper could be accepted as truth. Evidently he wasn’t wearing a life jacket, which a good sailor would do without thinking – but then, “Merrill” was of the opinion that he could walk on water, and therefore didn’t need one.