At the age of 21, after being three times shipwrecked, Morton returned to dry land and bought the Horncastle printing company of D Cousans. He subsequently built up an extended business touching several Lincolnshire market towns - and with great magnanimity, bought out his father's business and pensioned the old man off.

Mr C E Sharpe

The empire crumbled following the death of Morton in 1934 and, in the late 1950s, Market Rasen journalist Mr Charles Edward Sharpe (who had acquired the Market Rasen Mail in 1947) bought the bankrupt remains of the Horncastle enterprise.
The bringing together of the Horncastle News and the Market Rasen Mail touched off the growth of the extended company.
In 1968 it became one of the first publishing houses in the country to forsake letterpress for the web-offset and phototypesetting.
This investment in new equipment provided the capability of carrying out contract print work and also a stronger base for the development of Morton publishing.
Modern information technology has since enabled publishers to deliver their material to Horncastle and Mortons, having continued to develop their technical and management skills, are continually working to keep equipment up to date - and have come to be among the first to use computer-to-plate technology.
In 2001 Mortons took the radical step of moving out of local publishing, selling their Lincolnshire Independent Newspaper group, and concentrating solely on magazine publishing.
The company had become a leading player, nationally, in the publication of classic motorcycling magazines in connection with which they also run the country's three leading shows. Early 2001 Mortons purchased three more monthly magazines concerning Britain's classic motor heritage.