His relations with the collector of Customs and preventive officers seem to have been of the most friendly character, and herein lay most probably the secret of his success as a smuggler; indeed, the friendship of Carter with these officials helps us to understand the cause of the extreme prosperity of the smuggling industry along the Cornish coast at this period. In December, 1780, Harry Carter was lying in Newlyn Road aboard his cutter, with her consort the lugger alongside, when a messenger came from his friend the collector of Customs, saying that a Dunkirk privateer, called the Black Prince, and bearing a terrible reputation, was off St. Ives, committing many depredations upon the local shipping. The collector concluded his message by asking him to capture the privateer and so end the reign of terror along the coast. This duty was not at all to Harry Carter's liking; but, considering his business, it was a dangerous thing to displease the collector of Customs, and so with not a few qualms he set out upon the dangerous enterprise of actual warfare. He put round to St. Ives with his two vessels, and anchored off that town. On Christmas Day, in the morning, the redoubtable Black Prince hove in sight, and Carter sailed out of St. Ives Bay with his two ships to engage her. The Black Prince immediately put about and made for the open sea, a running fight ensuing between pursuers and pursued. The lugger in the pursuit soon received a fatal shot, which caused her to rapidly fill and sink with all hands on board. In the meantime Carter, having had his jib carried away by a shot and another planted in his hull, thought it high time to abandon the pursuit of the Black Prince; he was thus able to bear up and rescue seventeen of the lugger's crew of thirty-one, but the rest found a watery grave. Carter tells us: "Before we came up with the privateer, in expecting to come to an engagement, oh! what horror was on my mind for fear of death! as I knew I must come to judgment sure and 'sartin.' I feared if I died I should be lost for ever. Notwithstanding all this I made the greatest outward show of bravery, and through pride and presumption exposed myself to the greatest danger. I stood on the companion until the wad of the enemy's shot flew in fire about me, and I suppose the wind of the shot struck me down on the deck, as the shot took in the mainsail right in a line with me. One of my officers helped me up and thought I was wounded, and he would suffer me to go there no more."