In 1819, Lieutenant Morton exhibited at the Royal Academy, of which he is now an honorary member, a sketch of the tomb of Abelard and Heloise, in the burial ground of Pere la Chaise, near Paris.
In Dec. 1823, Captain Bullen was nominated to the chief command on the African station, and Mr. Morton appointed to accompany him thither in the Maidstone frigate. Between May 1824 and June 1827, that ship captured nineteen vessels, with 2595 slaves on board; and five others, laden with dry goods for slave barter, all of which were condemned as prizes at Sierra Leone. The total number of vessels engaged in this hateful traffic, captured by the squadron under the orders of Commodore Bullen, was fifty-nine, and the number of slaves, ten thousand eight hundred and fourteen. In addition to this, the Maidstone and her consorts rendered very essential assistance to the troops on the Western coast of Africa during the progress of the Ashantee war.
The Maidstone was paid off at Portsmouth, on the 15th Sept. 1827; and her first lieutenant, Mr. Morton, promoted to his present rank on the 6th Oct. following.
This officer is the author of “An Essay on the Electrical Formation of Hail Stones, in opposition to the absurd theories of the learned philosophers,” published, we believe, in the early and middle numbers of the Gentleman’s Magazine, and copied into the London Philosophical Magazine, and other periodical works, for 1822. Among other scientific inventions and improvements, he has proved by experiment the great power and rapidity that may be acquired in swimming by artificially increasing the surface of the hands and feet so as to meet (without impediment) such re-action from the water as to prevent the strength being exerted to disadvantage. Equipped with propelling gloves and slippers, a man might reach the shore from a shipwrecked vessel, with the aid of a log-line, when it would be impossible without such assistance.
Commander Morton has a sister married to a physician in Yorkshire; and a younger brother member of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, London.
