In the South China Sea, Moore and Percy Bassett-Smith, the surgeon of HMS Rambler, spent a week on a scientific survey of the
Tizard and
Macclesfield Banks. This work was carried out at the request of
Captain Wharton,
Hydrographer of the Navy, who was a member of the Coral Reef Committee of the
Royal Society.[2] They ran sections to determine the shapes of the reefs, and dredged to establish the type of coral growing, and the depths at which live coral could be found.[4] Later that year, while surveying the Zhoushan Archipelago and Hangzhou Bay in 1888, Moore took time to investigate the
tidal bore of the
Qiantang River, the largest in the world. He provided the first detailed description of the bore by a western observer.[5] On a subsequent visit, he was able to obtain photographs of the bore.[6]
Moore continued to pursue the scientific opportunities presented by surveying voyages on his next command, HMS Penguin. Bassett-Smith was again appointed surgeon, and the engineer was
J.J. Walker an established entomologist. Between 1890 and 1893 they collected widely, providing the material for a series of published papers.[7][8][9][10][11][12]
Admiralty Chart showing
Zhoushan and the mouths of the
Yangtze River, surveyed by Moore in HMS Rambler and Penguin in 1887–1892
Tidal bore of the Tsien-tang-kiang (Qiantang River) in 1892[6]
Bore shelter for junks at Bhota Pagoda, Haining, on the Qiantang River[5]
Spiritualism
Moore retired in 1904 with the rank of Rear-Admiral.[13] He developed an interest in spiritualism[1] and had a long history of defending fraudulent
mediums as genuine. He endorsed the direct voice medium
Etta Wriedt.[14] He defended the
Bangs Sisters and even stated that the psychical investigator
Hereward Carrington had never visited their house or exposed their tricks. After Carrington gave incontrovertible evidence that he had visited their house and caught them in fraud, Moore had to retract his charges.[15]
In 1906, Moore attended a séance with the British
materialization medium Frederick G. Foster Craddock. A small electric torch used to produce 'spirit' lights was discovered in a drawer during a séance by Moore. Despite admitting the fraud of the incident, Moore still endorsed the mediumship of Craddock, stating that his trance control "Graem" was a malicious spirit.[16]
Moore also endorsed the American materialization medium Joseph Jonson from
Toledo, Ohio. He claimed to have observed materialized spirits emerge from the cabinet during a séance in his book Glimpses of the Next State (1911). Jonson was later exposed as a fraud by
James Hewat McKenzie who discovered that Jonson's daughter had dressed up as a spirit.[17] In 1907, Hereward Carrington attended séances with Jonson at
Lily Dale, New York and concluded "on several occasions, the fraud was very apparent, and that I was enabled to follow the process of materialisation and dematerialisation with ease. Everything was the most obvious and simple trickery, and seen to be such."[18]
The spiritualist
Arthur Conan Doyle described Moore as "among the greatest of psychic researchers".[19] However, Moore was heavily criticized by psychical researchers. Science historian
William Hodson Brock has described Moore as a "credulous spiritualist".[20]