Thomas Morton (8 October 1781 – 24 December 1832) was a Scottish shipwright and inventor. His most widely known invention is the

patent slip The patent slip or marine railway is an inclined plane extending from shoreline into water, featuring a "cradle" onto which a ship is first floated, and a mechanism to haul the ship, attached to the cradle, out of the water onto a slip. The m ...

Biography

Morton was born in

Leith Leith (; gd, Lìte) is a port area in the north of the city of Edinburgh, Scotland, founded at the mouth of the Water of Leith. In 2021, it was ranked by ''Time Out'' as one of the top five neighbourhoods to live in the world. The earliest ...

in October 1781 and grew up to become a shipwright like his father, Hugh. After spending some time working for his father, Morton went on to form his own shipbuilding company in the borough which later became S. & H. Morton & Co. Unable to afford the installation of a dry dock in his Leith shipyards, Morton "resorted to the process of hauling up

hips In vertebrate anatomy, hip (or "coxa"Latin ''coxa'' was used by Celsus in the sense "hip", but by Pliny the Elder in the sense "hip bone" (Diab, p 77) in medical terminology) refers to either an anatomical region or a joint. The hip region ...

on greased ways". As this method was both dangerous and time-consuming, in 1818 he invented and installed the first

; a

slipway A slipway, also known as boat ramp or launch or boat deployer, is a ramp on the shore by which ships or boats can be moved to and from the water. They are used for building and repairing ships and boats, and for launching and retrieving small ...

with cradle to haul ships out of the water. This was installed on the

Water of Leith The Water of Leith (Scottish Gaelic: ''Uisge Lìte'') is the main river flowing near central Edinburgh, Scotland, and flows into the port of Leith where it flows into the sea via the Firth of Forth. Name The name ''Leith'' may be of Britt ...

in front of his premises on Cooper Street in

. He was granted a

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A ...

for the invention the following year. In 1824 Morton sued John Barclay in

Edinburgh Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian on the southern shore of t ...

for patent infringement after he had installed a similar design in the yards of his company, Stobcross, three years before. Barclay's version was described as a poor copy by fellow shipwright William Denny, and the court found in favour of Morton. Despite the popularity of the invention, Morton did not profit from it for the first six years of the patent. A total of 45 slips were built (in Scotland, England, Ireland, Russia and the United States), earning the shipwright a total profit of £5737, before he applied for an extension to the patent in 1832. The extension was denied and instead a

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. T ...

select committee awarded Morton the sum of £2500. In his later life he is listed as living at 1 Pilrig Place, a Georgian house on

Leith Walk Leith Walk is one of the longest streets in Edinburgh, Scotland, and is the main road connecting the centre of the city to Leith. Forming most of the A900 road, it slopes downwards from Picardy Place at the south-western end of the street to th ...

. Morton died in December 1832 and is interred in

South Leith Parish Church South Leith Parish Church, originally the Kirk of Our Lady, St Mary, is a congregation of the Church of Scotland. It is the principal church and congregation in Leith, in Edinburgh. Its kirkyard is the burial place for John Home (author of ''Do ...

yard . His company, S. & H. Morton & Co. continued operating.

Family

His son Hugh Morton (1812-1878) continued the family business but moved the main premises from Cooper St/ Coburg St to

on a site later used as a tram depot, attaching his house at 3 Smiths Place.Edinburgh and Leith Post Office Directory 1850

Memorials

Thomas Morton Hall, a performance hall holding up to 400 persons and sharing the Leith Town Hall with the Leith Theatre, is named after him. It was built in 1925.

Ships built by S. & H. Morton & Co.

* ''Wendouree'', launched in 1882 and wreck in Australia in 1898. * ''Tom Morton'', launched in 1872 for

Christian Salvesen Christian Salvesen was a Scottish whaling, transport and logistics company with a long and varied history, employing 13,000 staff and operating in seven countries in western Europe. In December 2007, it was acquired by French listed transport ...

; it was lost at sea in 1886.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Morton, Thomas 1781 births 1832 deaths Scottish inventors Scottish shipbuilders People from Leith 19th-century British businesspeople