Researching Charles Morgan

Morgan started working in New York City at the age of fourteen. He managed both wholesale and retail businesses before specializing in marine shipping. He invested in sailing vessels as early as 1819, while managing all aspects of the business from his office at the wharf in New York City. He started his first partnership for a packet company in 1831. During the 1830s, he held stakes in companies shipping to Kingston, Jamaica, and Charleston, South Carolina, from New York; and a stake in a company shipping between New Orleans and Galveston, Texas. During this time, he invested more in steamships than sailing ships. The LouisianaTexas packets became so successful that he gradually withdrew from the Atlantic trade in the late-1830s. Charles Morgan's Steamships primary cargo from Rhode Island to the South were Slaves.

In the 1840s and 1850s, Morgan expanded his shipping business in the Gulf of Mexico, expanding service to Mexico, Florida, and adding stops in Texas. Texas statehood and the Mexican War were boons to his enterprises of shipping mail, troops, and war material. By 1846, he sold his last stake in a sailing vessel. After 1849 and through part of the 1850s, Morgan responded to transportation demand to California driven by the gold rush. He offered passenger service from New York City to San Francisco via Panama. These activities pulled him into business alliances and rivalries with Cornelius Vanderbilt which culminated in Morgan's support of William Walker's filibuster in Nicaragua. Morgan also attempted to damage Vanderbilt's investments and his business positions before they agreed to a truce in 1858. In the late 1850s, a lucrative business developed out of a segment of railroad running between New Orleans and Berwick Bay, Louisiana. The railroad terminated in a desolate part of the state, and Morgan's steamers enabled the railroad to create revenue from an expensive infrastructure investment. In return, the railroad shortened Morgan's Louisiana to Texas route by about 150 miles. In 1855, Morgan incorporated his assets for the first time, co-founding the Southern Steamship Company. With family and other close friends managing the company, Morgan accelerated his investments in steamboats.

During the Civil War, he lost some of his investments to seizures by the North and the South. Most of the steamers seized were corporately owned by the Southern Steamship Company, which led to its liquidation in 1863. Morgan, however, prospered during the war despite these losses. He ran blockade runners for the Confederacy, but his most profitable venture during this period was the Morgan Iron Works. This shop built engines for thirteen ships sold to the Union Navy. At the end of the war, he repurchased some of these steamships at favorable prices.

During Reconstruction, Morgan sold his interest in the Morgan Iron Works. He also took advantage of the buyer's market for steamships and expanded his fleet. He resumed his Gulf packet service between New Orleans and Texas, and between New Orleans and Mobile, Alabama. In 1869, he acquired his first railroad. Two more railroad acquisitions followed in the 1870s. He died on May 8, 1878, at his home in New York City. Just prior to his death, he incorporated Morgan's Louisiana and Texas Railroad and Steamship Company and distributed his shares to several family members.

The grandson of the founder of the company, H.F.S. Morgan, and the son of the company's former chairman Peter Morgan, Charles Morgan joined the family firm full-time in 1985. Previously he had worked for 10 years as a news cameraman for ITN and then briefly in the publishing industry. After the Morgan Motor Company was featured on the BBC's Troubleshooter in 1991, he obtained an MBA. In 2013, he was removed as Morgan's managing director and continued as strategy director until October 2013, when he was voted off the company's board. He remains a minority shareholder.

With Gregory Houston Bowden, Morgan is the author of Morgan – 100 Years: The Official History of the World's Greatest Sports Car, published in 2008.

Morgan made a single first-class appearance for Nottinghamshire against Middlesex in the 1946 County Championship at Trent Bridge. Nottinghamshire won the toss and elected to bat first, making 263 all out, during which Morgan was dismissed for a duck by Laurie Gray. He bowled 22 wicketless overs in Middlesex's first-innings of 484 all out, while in Nottinghamshire's second-innings of 182 he was the last man out, dismissed for 13 runs by Walter Robins. Middlesex won what was to be his only major appearance by an innings and 39 runs.

He died in North Carolina, United States on 11 July 2001.