SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
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Tuesday, June 13, 2006 · Last updated 3:21 a.m. PT

Missing Md. publisher presumed dead

By BEN NUCKOLS
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER


Publisher and former diplomat Philip Merrill, 72, is shown in this Sept. 30, 2002 photo. Rescue crews resumed searching the Chesapeake Bay Sunday, June 11, 2006, for Merrill, whose sailboat was discovered empty in the water Saturday evening. (AP Photo/The Capital, G. Nick Lundskow)
ANNAPOLIS, Md. -- The search for a publisher and former diplomat who disappeared while sailing the Chesapeake Bay turned into a recovery mission after rescue teams found only his empty sailboat.

Search crews on Monday continued to look for Philip Merrill, 72, but rescuers said it was unlikely he was still alive after two days missing. His abandoned sailboat was discovered more than a dozen miles south of his planned sailing route, an 18-mile roundtrip from the western shore of Maryland to Kent Island.

Survival time in the 62-degree water was estimated at 28 hours.

Col. Mark S. Chaney, superintendent of the Maryland Natural Resources, said Merrill's family was told the search would become a recovery effort. Chaney said six boats were still searching the 100-square-mile area, including one boat equipped with sonar for bottom searching. A helicopter was also being used.

Merrill was an experienced sailor and went out on a breezy, clear day. The publisher of Washingtonian magazine, The (Annapolis) Capital newspaper and five other Maryland newspapers was sailing alone.

"He had handled that boat in similar conditions with a huge grin on his face," said John Page Williams, who took his boat into the water Monday to help with the search.

Merrill's 41-foot sailboat, the "Merrilly," was found drifting in shallow water at about 7:15 p.m. Saturday near Plum Point by two people on personal watercrafts, who boarded the vessel and found no one there, Chaney said. The boat's sails had been up, so they started the engine to get the vessel into deeper water and called authorities.

Chaney said foul play was not suspected.

Merrill was a longtime benefactor of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, a private group that works to restore the bay, whose headquarters is named for him. The college of journalism at the University of Maryland also was named for him.

He served as assistant secretary-general of NATO in Brussels from 1990 to 1992. Between 1983 to 1990, he served on the Department of Defense Policy Board. From 1981 to 1983, he was counselor to the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. In 1988, the Secretary of Defense awarded him the Medal for Distinguished Service, the highest civilian honor given by the department.

Merrill took leave from his publishing duties in December 2002, when he was sworn in by Vice President Dick Cheney as president and chairman of the Export-Import Bank of the United States. He stepped down when his term expired in July.

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Associated Press writer Ben Nuckols in Baltimore contributed to this report.

Phillip Merrill, a minor media mogul and current president of the U.S. Ex-Im Bank, is on the advisory council of the hawkish Center for Security Policy. In 2003, Merrill donated $4 million to the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies to set upa new Center for Strategic Studies, which is to be headed by Eliot Cohen, a key neocon scholar and member of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board. Merrill has also served as the assistant secretary general of NATO and in a number of U.S. government posts in the State and Defense Departments. In 1988 he was awarded the Medal for Distinguished Service, the highest civilian honor given by the Defense Department