About five years later in 1885, he opened a small shipsmithing yard of his own at the foot of 26th Street, Brooklyn, which he named the Morse Iron Works.

[2] Over the next dozen or so years, Morse was forced to place his company into receivership several times but on each occasion was able to recover and continue to expand the business.

[7] In 1919, the Morse Company built the world's largest floating dry dock, capable of servicing a ship 725 feet (221 m) long and weighing 30,000 tons.

[9] In 1929, Morse masterminded the merger of six New York ship repair yards, including his own, into a new $20,000,000 entity named United Dry Docks, Inc. – the largest company of its type in the world.

After only a short time in this role however, Morse retired from active business and returned to his native Nova Scotia, where he died a few months later at the age of 72.

Morse Jr. sued the company for two percent of its total wartime profits, a sum amounting to about $300,000, to which he claimed entitlement under an alleged condition of his employment contract.

[7] Edward P. Morse married Ada Martha Gavel on November 8, 1878, shortly before leaving his hometown of Clementsport, Nova Scotia, to begin his Brooklyn career.

[15] Morse was a longtime resident of 47 Plaza Street, Brooklyn,[2][16] but he also owned a 20-acre (81,000 m2) estate on Long Island then known as "Grey Gables",[17] known today as Villa Maria.