Frederick Ferdinand Moore

Moore was born on 24 December 1881 in Concord, New Hampshire, the eldest of four children of James Bell Moore of Stalybridge, England, and Nellie C. Moore of Ireland.[6] The Moore family lived primarily in Enfield, New Hampshire. As a boy, Moore worked in a woolen mill as a weaver. In order to study while his loom was running he would fasten a book to the frame and read when the weaving did not require his attention.[7] Moore appeared to be enrolled in Boston College but it is unclear whether he ever finished high school.[8]

According to The New York Times, Moore "ran away to sea when he was 15, as a seagoing cowpuncher in a cattleboat bound for Liverpool. For 10 or 12 years after that he roamed the world by sea routes as sailor, soldier and newspaper correspondent."[9] Canadian-American writer H. Bedford-Jones shared a similar account of Moore's youth: "Trooper, as he was called, had a master's license in sail – captain, to you. He was in the Boer War, the Philippine Insurrection, the Boxer trouble – where he was the first man over the Peking wall … In the Russo-Japan War he was a correspondent."[10]

Moore claims he circumnavigated the world three times by tramp steamers while still in his teens. He felt he was destined to become a sea captain, but after reading Kipling and the sinking of the Maine in 1898 he recognized that "the defence of his country was more alluring than the chance of a captain's berth."[11]

Illustration by Anton Otto Fischer in The Devil's Admiral

Moore contributed to stories about the Boxer Rebellion to the New York Herald in 1900.[12] After his discharge in 1904 from the US Army in Manila, he remained in Asia to cover the Russo-Japanese War as a correspondent.[13] As a correspondent for Hearst's, he filed one of the first reports in May 1905 of the Battle of Tsushima when the Japanese fleet defeated the Russian fleet.[14]

On his return to the United States in 1905, Moore became a reporter and feature writer for the San Francisco Examiner, where he remained until 1913.[15][16] He served as the editor of Argosy in New York City from 1913 to 1915. During this time he became a prolific short story writer, drawing largely on his experience in the US Army. His non-fiction essays were widely published. His article entitled "The Vanishing Army of the Bolsheviki" drew global attention within socialist movements.[17][18]

Moore's best-known and most critically acclaimed work is The Devil's Admiral, published in 1913.[19] The adventure novel about modern-day pirates draws on Moore's experience of sailing in the South China Sea.[20][21] Moore followed The Devil's Admiral with three other novels: Sailor Girl (1920),[22][23] Isle O' Dreams (1920)[24] and The Samovar Girl (1921).[25]

Moore was a prolific writer of pulp fiction and penned more than 160 short stories in his career, most frequently with the byline of Captain Frederick Moore. His stories were featured in the "Big Four" of pulp magazines: Argosy, Adventure, Blue Book and Short Stories. The majority of these were stories of the sea or military life.[26]

In 1925, Moore established the publication Book Dealers' Weekly, based out of New York.[27]

Moore enlisted in the US Army in May 1902 and served with Troop H 2nd Cavalry Regiment during the Philippine Insurrection. He declined a commission in 1904 and requested a discharge in Manila in November so that he could report on the Russo-Japanese War.[28]

Moore enlisted as a second lieutenant in Battery F of the First Field Artillery of the New York National Guard on 12 November 1913.[29]

He later enlisted in the US Army and as a captain in the Intelligence Division, General Staff, of the American Expeditionary Force, Siberia. He was stationed in Chita and had numerous encounters with Grigory Mikhaylovich Semyonov, the ataman of Baikal Cossacks. Moore was honorably discharged on 17 March 1919. The Emperor of Japan awarded him the Order of the Rising Sun 5th Class for his service as part of the Allied forces in Russia.[30] Moore documented his observations of Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War in his book Siberia To-day and became a widely cited authority on Japanese and Russian relations for many decades to follow.[31][32][33][2]

In the mid-1940s Moore became a deputy marshal with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.[34] On 16 January 1947, he was assigned to collect a writ of $157 against Mrs. Eleanor Madras, the owner of a Pasadena café. It was the last time Moore was seen alive.[35]

Two days later, police apprehended Edward H. Evans, a 34-year-old former boxer and fight promoter, as a suspect in the murder. In a 17-page confession, Evans admitted to killing Moore.[36] According to Evans, the shooting grew out of an argument between Moore and himself in a Monterey Park café around Christmas. When Moore visited the Pasadena café on 16 January, Evans shot him at 10 pm. Evans admitted to loading Moore's body into Madras's car and driving to an unidentified place, presumably in Kern County.[5]

According to Evans, he buried Moore in a shallow grave and disposed of Moore's pistol as well as his own. He lit the car on fire. Authorities found the burnt-out car but despite massive searches they could not locate Moore's remains.[37]

Evans was declared insane and committed to the Mendocino State Hospital. He was released after serving two years under a corpus delicti clause because Moore's remains had still not been found.[38] A skull was found in 1957 in the area where Evans allegedly buried Moore, but dental records did not match Moore's.[39][40]

Moore married Florence Raymond Frisbee in San Francisco on 25 August 1906, a few months after both experienced the San Francisco fire and earthquake. They had one daughter, Marjorie, born in 1909.

On 18 October 1914, he wed playwright Eleanor Gates, author of The Poor Little Rich Girl, in New Jersey.[41][42] At the time, Gates had an interlocutory decree of divorce from her husband, Richard Walton Tully, and Moore had a similar decree from his wife. Moore's first wife, Florence, contested the decree of divorce, and as a result Gates annulled her marriage to Moore.[43] Gates claimed that Moore had been an "invalid" for seven years prior to her marriage but her cooking cured him. She said in 1922 that amongst friends they were known as the "Inseparables."[44] The two remained as a couple till the early 1930s.[3]

Works by Frederick Ferdinand Moore at Project Gutenberg