We learn something of the Carter family business from the autobiography written by Henry Carter, an account of his life from 1749 until 1795. Much else is found in a memoir printed in _The Wesleyan Methodist Magazine_, 1831. “Captain Harry” lived until 1829, farming in a small way at the neighbouring hamlet of Rinsey. He had long relinquished smuggling, having been converted in 1789, and living as a burning and a shining light in the Wesleyan communion thereafter, preaching with fervour and unction. He tells us, in his rough, unvarnished autobiography {173} that he first went smuggling and fishing with his brothers when seventeen years of age, having already worked in the mines. At twenty-five years of age he went regularly smuggling in a ten-ton sloop, with two men to help him; and was so successful that he soon had a sloop, nearly twice as large, especially built for him. Successful again, “rather beyond common,” he (or “we,” as he says) bought a cutter of some thirty tons, and employed a crew of ten men. “I saild in her one year, and I suppose made more safe voyages than have been ever made, since or before, with any single person.” All this while, he tells us, he was under conviction of sin, but went on, nevertheless, for years, sinning and repenting. “Well, then,” he continues, “in the cource of these few years, as we card a large trade with other vessels allso, we gained a large sum of money, and being a speculating family, was not satisfied with small things.” A new cutter was accordingly built, of about sixty tons burthen, and Captain Harry took her to sea in December 1777. Putting into St. Malo, to repair a sprung bowsprit, his fine new cutter, with its sixteen guns, was taken by the French, and himself and his crew of thirty-six men flung into prison, difficulties having again sprung up between England and France, and an embargo being laid upon all English shipping in French ports. In prison he was presently joined by his brother John; both being shortly afterwards sent on parole to Josselin. In November 1779 they were liberated, in exchange for two French gentlemen, prisoners of war. The family, Captain Harry remarks, they found alive and well on their return home after this two years’ absence, but in a low state, the “business” not having been managed well in their enforced absence. It is impossible to resist the strong suspicion, in all this and other talk in the autobiography, of buying and building newer and larger vessels, that the Carters were financed by some wealthy and influential person, or persons, as undoubtedly many smugglers were, the profits of the smuggling trade, when conducted on a large scale and attended by a run of luck, being very large and amply recouping the partners for the incidental losses. But the loss of the fine new cutter, on her first voyage, at St. Malo, must have been a very serious business.