[1] Merrill's ship, Champlain, was built for W. H. Kinsman & Company in East Boston, Massachusetts, in 1874 by Campbell & Brooks.

While at the dock, Merrill noticed three martingales and guessed, correctly, that the largest of them was bound for his vessel.

[6] In the 1850s, when Merrill's seafaring career was its peak, he commissioned noted Portland architect Thomas J. Sparrow, to build him a home.

)[1][7] Merrill died on June 16, 1875, aged 56, when he was knocked overboard from his ship, Champlain, while shipwrecking in the Farallon Islands, California, off San Francisco, in dense fog.

[1] He had made sure that his crew was safely aboard the lifeboat, and as he was preparing to join them, he was struck by the martingale that he had personally requested by the ship's builders the previous year.