Isaac L. Fasseur

He entered the water and saved a sailor swept over the side.

Isaac Laurens Fasseur was born at Flushing in the Netherlands in the late 1850s. His family was connected with seafaring, and he was living at Valparaíso in Chile when he joined the United States Navy. His naval service placed him in the Pacific during a period when American warships frequently visited the ports of South America.

By June 1884 he was an ordinary seaman aboard USS Lackawanna. On 13 June, while the ship was at Callao in Peru, William Cruise fell overboard. Fasseur went to his assistance together with Captain of the Hold Louis Williams. They rescued Cruise from drowning.

Both sailors received the Medal of Honor for their conduct. Fasseur’s official citation is brief, identifying the ship, date, port and successful rescue. It recognizes a lifesaving act rather than an action against an enemy. The award reflected the nineteenth-century practice of using the Navy’s highest decoration for exceptional courage in peacetime emergencies as well as combat.

Fasseur left the Navy honourably in April 1885, recorded as a ship’s tailor. He later returned to the Netherlands and married Maria Valke in Rotterdam in 1889. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1897.

He subsequently resumed American naval service. The 1900 United States census placed him aboard USS Philadelphia at Bremerton, Washington, with Mare Island Naval Shipyard in California given as his home address. That record shows that his connection with the Navy continued well beyond the rescue for which he had been decorated. The Medal of Honor Historical Society records that he deserted the Navy in 1902.

Official Medal of Honor citation

Serving on board the U.S.S. Lackawanna, 13 June 1884, at Callao, Peru, Fasseur rescued William Cruise, who had fallen overboard, from drowning.