Frederic ‘Fred’ Macquarie Lassetter was born in Woollahra, New South Wales, Australia, on the 30th July 1892, the only child of Colonel Harry Beauchamp and Elizabeth Anne Lassetter (née Antill). Both of his parents came from military families, and his father, following a career in the British Army, joined the family business in Sydney, in New South Wales, Australia, but on the outbreak of the Great War, he and his wife returned to Great Britain, so that the Colonel could offer his services once more, to the British Army.
At that time, Fred Lassetter was studying at Oxford University, but four days after the outbreak of the Great War, on 8th August 1914, he left his studies and enlisted in the 1/14th (County of London) Battalion, The London Regiment, (London Scottish) (Territorial Force). Having proceeded overseas on 14th September 1914, as 2209 Private F.M. Lassetter, on 31st October 1914, he was wounded in the regiment’s first major engagement at Messines, in Belgium, not far from the town of Ypres.
In order to complete his convalescence, he obtained leave from his unit and accompanied his mother on a trip to Australia, no doubt to sort out family and business affairs there. Mother and son made their return to England via San Francisco, California, in the United States of America, and for the latter part of their journey, booked saloon passage on the Lusitania from New York to Liverpool. On reaching New York, they stayed at The Biltmore Hotel, before joining the liner at the Cunard berth at Pier 54, on the morning of 1st May 1915. Once they had boarded, with ticket number 46107, they were escorted to their rooms, Frederic Lassetter to room A14 and his mother to A4. Both of these were the personal responsibility of First Class Bedroom Steward Edward Bond, who came from Anfield, a district of Liverpool.
Before he had left England, Frederic Lassetter had applied for a commission in the British Army and was, as a result, gazetted a second lieutenant in the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry. At about the same time, his father had been appointed to command a Territorial Force battalion of the same regiment in The West Riding Brigade of The 49th (West Riding) Division, and was helping to train it at Strensall Camp, near York, in Yorkshire!
On the afternoon of 7th May, six days after the Lusitania had set sail, with the liner off the coast of southern Ireland and only hours away from her destination, she was struck by one torpedo fired by the German submarine U-20.
Frederic Lassetter helped his mother into a lifeboat soon afterwards, but on an order from Captain Turner that the lifeboats should be emptied, as they were not going to
sink, he helped her out again with fellow saloon passenger Harold Boulton. Frederic Lassetter then managed to get a lifebelt for himself and his mother and having attached them both, he took the advice of another saloon passenger and experienced seafarer, Commander John Foster Stackhouse, late of the Royal Navy, and jumped into the sea with his mother.
An account of their survival was published in The Times, on Monday 10th May 1915, which stated: -
Mrs. Lassetter, who was covered in black smuts from the explosion, went to the cabin for a lifebelt and then on deck. Private (sic) Lassetter and Commander Stackhouse gave their lifebelts away. The former got another, then found his mother, and both jumped into the sea, and swam to an upturned boat, which soon became overcrowded.
They then swam to a flag case, to which they clung, from 2.30 till 5.30, when they were picked up by the Greek collier Katerine, having been previously been run down by a steam trawler, Mrs. Lassetter receiving a blow from the propeller.
The Greek collier Katerine was in fact the Hopkins and Jones steamer Westborough, of 6,400 tons, registered in Cardiff, Glamorgan, Wales. She had left for England from Havana, Cuba, with a cargo of sugar and had been diverted from Queenstown, where she intended to re-coal, to pick up survivors. Her master, Captain E.L. Taylor had deliberately disguised her as a Greek merchant ship, renaming her Katerina and even flying a Greek flag, in the hope that German U-Boats would respect her supposed neutral status!
Another account, published in The Tragedy of the Lusitania, written by American sea captain Frederick D. Ellis, and published not long after the sinking, has a different version of the Lassetter’s time spent in the sea and states: -
Lieut. Lassetter, an officer of a Scottish regiment (sic) who was wounded early in the war, and had been on a voyage of three months to recover his health, was saved, together with his mother, by the saloon grand piano of the Lusitania, on which they floated for three hours.
Mr. Lassetter says that he came up near his mother after the ship went down, and sighted the piano floating with its legs up. He lifted his mother onto the piano, and then climbed aboard himself. They found the unique craft well above the waves, and perfectly seaworthy. The Lassetters were less exhausted when taken aboard a trawler than most of those persons who had been in lifeboats.
Another account, written by Harold Boulton in a letter published in his old school magazine, The Stoneycroft Magazine, in June 1915 also mentioned in some detail the survival of the Lassetters and stated: -
Immediately the ship started to list to the starboard side, and I rushed down to the cabin of a woman, by name Mrs. Lasseter, (sic) who was returning from a tour round the world with her son, who had been wounded at the front, and at whose table I had sat on the whole voyage. I opened the door,
went into the cabin and shouted to her, but there was no answer, and so I tried to turn on the light but found it would not work. Having hastily looked in the cabin to see that she was not lying there asleep, I went to my cabin, which was almost opposite, to look for my lifebelt, but someone must have taken it, as it was not there. I then rushed along the corridor - I say “rushed“, but it hardly was a rush, as there was such a list on the ship, that one foot was really on the side of the wall and the other on the floor - and I managed to get to the end of the corridor, where I found a steward giving away lifebelts. I joined three or four people waiting for them, and, having received one, rushed out to the deck in search of this woman and her son.
At last I found them on the port side, which, owing to the list of the ship, was very high up, making walking on the top very hard. I found them there eventually, and while the boy stood with his mother, I helped with a crowd of other men to push out the boats that were hanging and which had been swung out since Wednesday or Thursday, as we were nearing the danger zone, but they were swinging in instead of out, owing to the list of the ship. We had to get a sort of swing on the boat and every time she swung out the men at the ropes lowered it a little till at last it was almost on the level of the deck. Then we all shouted “let the women get in first,” and a great many women did get in, but some men, and I helped the boy and his mother into this boat.
Just as it was filling up with people the Captain for the first time appeared on the bridge, and shouting loudly and waving his hand, shrieked at the top of his voice -"don't lower the boats - don't lower the boats - the ship cannot sink - the ship cannot sink.” Then in an appealing way to the crowd of men said “will the gentlemen kindly assist me in getting the women out of the boats and off the upper deck.” Thereupon those in the boats jumped out, and I helped the boy and his mother myself out of the boat and started with them inside on the deck. I then felt the ship tremble, and looking towards the bow I saw a lot of angry-looking water and the bow gradually being submerged, and shouted to them, “come on, let us get away; the ship's sinking; let us jump overboard,” and hurrying across the deck, had to get into the boat that had been lowered before being able to jump clear of the ship, and we all three jumped from the boat overboard. .....
Seeing a cabinet that I think was used for putting a piano in, when they keep a piano on deck for open-air concerts, and no one on it, I swam a few yards to it and scrambled on. Once on, I turned round to see where my boy friend and his mother were, and seeing them on another upturned boat about forty yards away, I shouted to them. They shouted back, “Is there any room on there for us,” and I shouted back, “Yes, by all means.” Leaning over into the water I picked up, by a piece of good luck, a broken oar and tried to paddle towards them, but needless to say, did not make very much headway. They both having put on lifebelts before they jumped overboard, jumped off their upturned boat and swam to me, and I pulled them both up. By the time the three of us were on this case - the top of it was really under water, and the hard thing to do was to balance it. We were knocked off four times altogether, and having drifted away from the bulk of the survivors, we all three sat with our legs dangling in the water, and the water up to our waists, till about 6-30.
Both mother and son were both eventually landed at Queenstown, from where they both made it back, in due course, safe and sound, to England. Frederic Lassetter was aged 22 years at the time of his ordeal. He then saw active service in the British Army as an officer in the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry for the rest of the period of the war and managed to survive the conflict, as did his father.
Bedroom Steward Bond, who had looked after both of the Lassetters as they crossed the Atlantic, also survived the sinking and eventually made it back to his Anfield home, but Staff Captain Anderson, and Commander Stackhouse both lost their lives.
After the end of the Great War, Fred Lassetter returned to civilian life, qualifying and practising as a barrister in London. On the 30th April 1921, he married Nancy Kilgour at the Holy Trinity Church in Upper Chelsea, London. The couple had three children – Matthew, born in 1922; Charlotte, born in 1928, and who died in 1930, aged 1 year; and Frederick Joseph, born in 1931.
On the 19th January 1922, he re-joined the military, albeit the Territorial Army, as a second lieutenant with the London Scottish Regiment. At first attached to ‘D’ Company, he soon became proficient with regimental challenge teams in territorial unit competitions - particularly in bayonet fighting and rifle shooting. In 1923, he took command of ‘B’ Company and the following year was part of a contingent of six officers and 41 other ranks who sailed to Toronto, Ontario, Canada, to celebrate the formation of The Toronto Scottish which was affiliated to the London Scottish.
Later, because of the pressure of family business and especially as his work had taken him back to Australia, he had to relinquish his commission, and his association with the regiment. He was also beginning to suffer from heart problems.
Fred and his wife moved to “Redleaf”, Winchester Road, Whitchurch, Hampshire, and on the outbreak of the Second World War, he again received a commission as a second lieutenant in the Territorial Army. Weakened by ill-health and the toils of war and peace, he died on the 24th February 1940, aged 47 years, from a weak and damaged heart. Members of his family believe that a contributory factor of his early death was the ingestion of fuel oil while he was in the water immediately after the sinking of the Lusitania. He left an estate of £16,332-8s.-5d. (£16,332.42p.)
The editor of The London Scottish Regimental Gazette recorded his memories of Fred Lassetter in the edition of April 1940, when he wrote: -
So Lassetter has passed on. ..... Who ever can forget his cheery grin, his air of innocence and bewilderment his genius for untidiness and his power of lightning repartee that silenced would-be critics. He joined “H” Company at Waterdale Farm shortly before we sailed for France in 1914 being one of a party of Oxford undergraduates that joined us from the 2nd Battalion.
Issued with kit in a hurry, Lassetter, with his huge frame and short legs (he had been picked as a probable for the 1915 Oxford crew), had been given the only kilt which would go round his waist, but which reached far below his knees. His Sergeant told him exactly what he looked like whereupon Fred took off the kilt, slashed off the bottom four or five inches with the regulation “cut-throat” razor, donned the kilt and paraded. Unfortunately he had not cut the cloth straight. and the result was the most comic-looking kilt ever worn.
Again, Le Mans, sentry on guard at gate, crowds of French people around him, (we) pushed our way through to discover Fred leaning on his rifle and telling them all in fluent colloquial French that his sporran was made out of his uncle’s beard and all sorts of similar nonsense that sent us into fits of laughter.
We had no letters or parcels for weeks and when we reassembled as a battalion, in came a mail. Without exaggeration, Lassetter had two sackfuls, letters, parcels, puddings, sweaters shirts socks tobacco, gramophones, records, sleeping bags etc., in fact, as he said himself, every girl he had ever spoken to had sent him something. His comments were rich, but his efforts to pass the goods on to his pals were useless - we went up into action next day, and everything was left behind.
I lost touch with Fred for some years as he was wounded at Messines, invalided home, and I am under the impression that his undoubted power as a speaker was recognized by the authorities and he was sent to the United States in 1915 on a lecture tour for propaganda purposes. At any rate, he was coming home on the Lusitania when it was torpedoed. He kept his mother afloat for several hours before being picked up, and thus I believe, first strained that magnificent frame. After the war I met him again as a subaltern in the post war Scottish, and he was one of the official party that visited Toronto in 1923 upon the formation of the Toronto Scottish as our Allied Regiment.
Later, pressure of business compelled him to leave the Scottish and took him abroad to Australia. Here, the strain of war began to tell, and his heart gave way.
He came home a very sick man, and we saw him at the last “H” Company Supper. I say “saw”, because his strength would not permit him to stay long and he faded away without any good-byes. He wrote to me after to say that he only just managed to get to the taxi. His last letter to me was fairly recent, full of reminiscences of Waterdale Farm and accompanied by a sketch with little personal touches, such as “Field where we were supposed to do Night Ops.," “Rhubarb's office," “Through gate to cook-house and latrines.'' Good-bye, Fred.
In some records, Fred Lassetter’s forename is spelled as ‘Frederick’, but most official records record the correct spelling of ‘Frederic’, and his surviving signatures also state ‘Frederic’.
Register of Births, Marriages and Deaths, Australia Birth Index 1788 – 1922, Sydney Australia Anglican Parish Registers 1814 – 2011, London England Church of England Marriages and Banns 1754 – 1932, 1911 Census of England & Wales, 1939 Register, California Passenger and Crew Lists 1882 – 1959, Canada Ocean Arrivals 1919 – 1924, Cunard Records, British Regiments 1914-18, London Scottish Regimental Gazette, London Scottish Regimental Museum, Probate Records, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner, Times, Stoneycroft Magazine, Last Voyage of the Lusitania, Seven Days to Disaster, Tragedy of the Lusitania, PRO 22/71, Graham Maddocks, Clem Webb, Nyle Monday, Stuart Williamson, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.