When Truro, the second most northerly town on Cape Cod, was first settled as Pamet 1646, it was part of the larger area then called Nauset. Pamet's name was changed to Truro (after a Cornish town it was said to resemble) when it was incorporated as a separate town in 1709. Truro developed a whaling fleet based at Pamet River Harbor, which comprised nine sloops by the early 1800s. In its early years, mariners knew Pamet as Dangerfield because of the frequent wrecks off its shores. A treacherous spot called Peaked Hill Bars, a graveyard for many ships, lies about a mile northeast of the lighthouse site. The 64-gun British warship Somerset, immortalized in Longfellow's poem The Ride of Paul Revere, famously struck the bars in 1778; 21 lives were lost.
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