Caleb Foote was mentioned in a recently published book “Rebels at Sea- Privateering in the American Revolution”, by Eric Jay Dolin, New York, Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2022, p. 188.
Caleb Foote was captured on the Salem privateer sloop Gates and sent to Forton prison in England.
The sea journal of Caleb Foote was published in an article “Reminiscences of the Revolution: Prison and Sea Journal of Caleb Foote,” Historical Collections of the Essex Institute, 1889, 97.
The Volume has been digitized and is available at https://archive.org/details/essexinstitutehiv26esse/122/mode/2up
The information regarding Caleb Foote is on pages 90 to 120.
Caleb was captured in July, 1778, and taken to England. He was confined in Forton prison until October 14, 1780, when he managed to escape. He eventually got on board an American ship of war, the South Carolina. After a long and wearisome voyage he finally arrived back in the States and was discharged January 17, 1782, near the end of the Revolutionary War. He died from illness contracted during his military service on May 19, 1787, and was buried at the graveyard of St. Peter’s Church (presumably St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Salem, Massachusetts)
In his letters and sea journal he described the deplorable conditions and hardships endured during his time abord the sloop Gates, in Forton prison, and aboard the South Carolina.
~Robert Foote
Note from Caroline Bigelow:
I contacted St. Peter’s, and they do not have a full list of burials for the Church before 1833, which is when the church was rebuilt. Caleb Foote is not one of the few names that they do have, but that is not very surprising. He does have a grave marker in the Harmony Grove Cemetery in Salem, MA. His body may have been moved by the family after the cemetery opened in 1839, or the marker may be a cenotaph (the body is still at St. Peter’s, and the marker is in the new family plot in his memory). Harmony Grove does not have a record of Caleb being interred there, so I’m leaning towards it being a cenotaph for him.
Caleb’s death *is* recorded in the Salem vital records (as Caleb Foote, son of Enoch), though the cause of death is not given. Also, not unusual for the time period.