1903: Canadian Ship Neptune Asserts Sovereignty In The Arctic

On 23 August, the Neptune departed from Halifax and by 4 September she was entering Cumberland Sound, Baffin Island.

The expedition was commanded by A. P. Low, an experienced geologist with extensive field work in the Subarctic and Arctic to his credit. Major J. D. Moodie - promoted to Superintendent during the expedition -headed the six man detachment of the Northwest Mounted Police and possessed wide administrative powers. Several scientific and professional men were on board to collect data on arctic plants, animals, physiography, geology, meteorology and Eskimo health, and to make a photographic record of the voyage. An Eskimo interpreter joined ship at Port Burwell. All together the complement of the vessel was forty-three.

The Neptune herself was a Newfoundland sealer of 465 tons, wooden-hulled but strengthened for ice navigation, schooner rigged with auxiliary power. Her captain was S. L. Bartlett

At the time concern had been expressed, not only for remote parts of the Arctic, where there was seldom if ever a Canadian presence, but also for relatively accessible regions where Canada’s title had hitherto been taken for granted. The geologist Tyrrell expressed a disquieting opinion:

. . . although by the Treaty of Utrecht, the sovereignty of Hudson Bay was ceded to Great Britain, it is just possible that, through long continued acquiescence, these foreigners [American whalemen] may be establishing rights whilst ours are being allowed to lapse.

(quoted in McGrath [c. 1903la)

In 1903, concurrent with the extension of police authority to Herschel Island in the western Arctic and Fort McPherson in the Mackenzie River valley, the Neptune Expedition headed north to enforce Canadian jurisdiction in the eastern Arctic.

Prior to the Neptune expedition, Canada’s claim to the Arctic regions had rested upon the flag-planting and cairn-building activities of British explorers from the time of Frobisher onwards. There had been no evidence of occupation, of regular visitation, or of the enforcement of law, and the precise delimitations of the regions transferred from Britain to Canada in 1870 and 1880 had been open to different interpretations.

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