Morris got off and dribbling the ball quite round his opponents, brought it in front of the goal and a kick from Lieut Dorward scored the first goal for the Royal Engineers" and "for the Engineers Lieut Morris ...(was) particularly conspicuous"[5]), he was not a member of any of the regiment's teams which reached the FA Cup Finals in 1872 and 1874 and won the trophy in 1875.
[8][11] Morris was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Royal Engineers on 10 July 1867, spending his early years training at Chatham and Aldershot.
[12][13] On 21 October 1871, he was sent to Mauritius, in the Indian Ocean, remaining there until 9 January 1874,[12] during which time he met Lord Lindsay and David Gill who were preparing to observed the transit of Venus later that year, in order to obtain new data to measure the distance between the Earth and the Sun.
[1][14] In July 1877, he was appointed Assistant Instructor in Surveying at the Royal School of Military Engineering at Chatham, Kent, where he remained for five years.
[12][15] In 1882–83, he was in charge of the British expedition based in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia to study the Transit of Venus,[1] under the overall command of David Gill.
[16][17] On his return to London in 1883, Morris worked for two months on special duty under the Colonial Office,[14] before being directed to lead a party to South Africa to carry out a geodetic survey (calculating the dimensions and shape of the Earth) of the Cape Colony and Natal, under the overall direction of David Gill, who was now H.M. Astronomer at the Royal Observatory at the Cape of Good Hope.
By the end of 1883, the party had surveyed a chain of points between Newcastle and Kokstad, a distance of approximately 400 kilometres (250 mi).
[4] By November 1887, the reduced party had managed to re-survey Bailey's chain as far as Port Elizabeth, and on to Caledon where in June 1890 they connected to the arc of the meridian surveyed by Sir Thomas Maclear in the 1840s.
[22] On 22 July 1898, Morris was appointed colonel on the staff of the Royal Engineers[12] and returned to South Africa, acting as district inspector based at Cape Town during the Second Boer War.
[2][26] For his services in South Africa during the Boer war, Morris was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) from 29 November 1900.
According to the Biographical Database of Southern African Science, Morris's "contribution to surveying in South Africa was extensive and of lasting value, and carried out with enthusiasm and devotion to duty".
[30] On 27 April 1871, Morris married Edith Sophia Tireman (1849–1917) at St Margaret's Church at Bowers Gifford in Essex, where the bride's father, the Revd.
[33] On returning to the United Kingdom in 1907, Morris retired to Betws-y-Coed in North Wales, living firstly at "Fron Heulog"[34] before settling at "Islwyn".