From that time he began to specialise in surveying, and served on the North Borneo Boundary Commission in 1901, helping in the construction of several maps and the definition of boundaries. His most important position was in command of a destroyer, which he permitted to collide with a liberty boat, resulting in his being posted to dockside watch-keeping jobs. He then went to China and made the first triangulated survey of the Yangtze River from 1905–1908. After China, he was posted to Africa, and from 1911-1914 was in command of a survey ship on the Gambia river. In 1902 he married Amy Elizabeth, daughter of Edmund and Phoebe Baynes-Reed of Victoria, British Columbia.