I presume that your pictures show the face of the inwale that would be against the inside face of the hull planking, with the flat top of the 4 pockets against the square top of the ribs and the rounded sides of the pocket against the rounded upper sides of the rib, like so:
I think that the "L" shaped seat hanger bolt shown supports my presumption. And this means that the four vertically cut pockets are oriented the way that most pockets on most Morris are oriented, and that the majority of the pockets were cut wrong (or at least ideosyncratically).
I believe that the rib pockets on Morris inwales were made by drilling blind holes in a single full-length strip of wood that was then cut in half to produce two inwales. I also have always assumed that the pockets were drilled with a Forstner drill bit, or one like it -- a Forstner bit produces a clean flat-bottomed hole with a small center pit or depression, as you can see in two similar pockets. A hole saw cut would leave a plug in the hole that would have to be broken out -- extra work -- and the bottom of the hole would often not be clean and neat. The pocket holes are usually slightly less than perfect half circles – the kerf of the saw splitting the wale would reduce the pockets just a bit from being full half circles. (However, a Forstner bit can drill a partial circle at the edge of a board, so it is possible that half-circle pockets (or pockets greater than, or less than, half circles) were each drilled along the edge of a finished-width inwale -- possible, but again, more work, fussier work.)
This picture shows the bottom face of the inwale; a the kerf of a saw splitting a drilled board would have run along the face of the inwale at the top of the picture.
If I am wrong in my presumption about the face shown in your pics, and if the face shown is actually the face that would be oriented towards the bottom of the canoe , there is still the problem of why there are four odd pockets out, where the rib ends would not fit as shown in the two preceding pics, and the additional problem of why the hanger bolt, when in use, would then be sticking through the side of the hull.
I would note that on a long decked Morris, the end of the deck and its coaming usually meet the inwale above the bow seat.
But in this picture, and in some others, I see no change in the rib pockets, and I can't think of any reason why there would be.
Indeed, I can't see any reason for cutting some of the pockets differently than the others.
Perhaps I'm issing something, but I think your inwale was made by the same guy who built this canoe:
Greg