Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 2.djvu/669

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Morley
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Morris

admiralty to lay the first Atlantic telegraph cable. In June 1863 he was promoted to stall commander, and in August was appointed to the Marlborough, of 121 guns, flagship in the Mediterranean. He navigated the Great Eastern in 1865 and 1866 when she was employed in laying the second and third Transatlantic cables; and, when the cable broke in mid ocean in 1865, he fixed the position so accurately as to ensure the subsequent recovery of the broken end. When the Great Eastern had hooked the lost cable and was heaving it up to her bows, the mark-buoy placed by Moriarty was bumping against the ship's side. He was in 1866 awarded the C.B. for this success, and received a valuable testimonial from his brother officers. In Dec. 1867 he reached the rank of staff-captain, and was appointed to Portsmouth dockyard as assistant master attendant, becoming master attendant and Queen's harbour-master in Nov. 1869. Moriarty held this post until 3 Dec. 1874, when he was placed on the retired list with the rank of captain. After his retirement he was occasionally employed as nautical assessor to the judicial committee of the privy council, and frequently as nautical expert before parliamentary committees, among which those on Barry Docks, the Tay Bridge, the Forth Bridge, and the Tower Bridge may be mentioned. His chief publications were four volumes of sailing directions (1887-93), compiled for the admiralty, and the articles on 'Log,' 'Navigation,' and 'Seamanship' in the 'Encyclopædia Britannica' (9th edit.) Moriarty died at Lee, Kent, on 18 Aug. 1906, and was buried in the cemetery there. Moriarty married (1) on 30 July 1852 Lavinia Charlotte (d. Sept. 1874), daughter of William Page Foster, by whom he had two sons and two daughters; (2) in 1875 Harriet Elizabeth, daughter of Robert Avent of St. Budeaux, Devonshire; she died without issue in March 1892.

[The Times, 20 Aug. 1906; information from the family.]

L. G. C. L.


MORLEY, third Earl of. [See Parker, Albert Edmund (1843–1905), politician.]

MORRIS AND KILLANIN, Lord. [See Morris, Sir Michael (1826–1901), lord chief justice of Ireland.]

MORRIS, Sir LEWIS (1833–1907), poet and Welsh educationist, eldest surviving son of Lewis (Edward Williams) Morris, solicitor of Carmarthen, by Sophia, daughter of John Hughes, shipowner and merchant of the same town, was born in Spilman Street, Carmarthon, on 23 Jan. 1888. His father, who was grandson of Lewis Morris (1703-1765) [q. v.], Welsh poet, originally of Anglesey and later of Penbryn, near Aberystwyth, was first registrar of the Glamorgan circuit of county courts, and from the subdivision of the office till his death on 30 June 1872 registrar of the Swansea court. He possessed great political influence (on the liberal side) in the town and county of Carmarthen' (J. Lloyd Morgan, Life of Prof. Morgan, p, 39). Besides an elder brother and a sister who died in infancy, Morris had three brothers, William Hughes (d. 1003) and Charles Edward, both solicitors, and John, rector of Narberth since 1885.

Morris was educated at Queen Elizabeth's grammar school, Carmarthen (1841-7), and at Cowbridge (1847-50) under Hugo D. Harper, whom he followed, with a number of other Welsh boys, to Sherborne, where he remained one year (1850-1). With Harper he formed a lifelong friendship. At Cowbridge he wrote a prize poem on Pompeii; at Sherborne he won the Leweston prize for classics and a prize for an English poem, 'A Legend of Thermopylæ.' He proceeded to Jesus College, Oxford, matriculating on 26 June 1851, and took first class in both classical moderations in 1853 and literæ humaniores in 1855 (Harriet Thomas, Father and Son, p. 51). He graduated B.A. in 1856, proceeding M.A. in 1858, and was awarded the chancellor's prize for the English essay on 'The Greatness and Decline of Venice' in 1858. 'Nothing but the possession of more than the statutable amount of property prevented his election to a fellowship' (Hardy, Jesus College, p. 201). For the same reason he had been ineligible for an entrance scholarship, but had been granted the rank of an honorary scholar. A college literary club, including among its members John Richard Green (who entered as a scholar in 1855), jointly produced a poem entitled 'The Gentiad', satirising the more exclusive and wealthier set to which Morris belonged (Letters of J. R. Green, p. 15). One of its most caustic lines, attributed by Morris to Green, though it is authoritatively stated it was not written by him, gave great offence to Morris owing to a subtle imputation on his father's professional conduct. The breach between Morris and Green was never healed, not even in 1877, when both were simultaneously elected fellows of the college, shortly alter the appointment, as principal, of Morris's old master (Dr. Harper).