The resolution of the Alaska boundary dispute in 1903 between Canada, representing the British Empire, and the United States turned on critical interpretations of the 1825 Treaty of Saint Petersburg. Originally negotiated between Tsarist Russia and Great Britain, the treaty established the boundary between Russian America and British North America along the Alaskan panhandle. However, the diplomatic negotiations were conducted in French, the international language of diplomacy at the time, while the implementing documents were translated into English.
The treaty text specified that the border would follow the crest of the mountains parallel to the coast, but where those mountains extended more than ten marine leagues inland, the boundary would follow a line ten leagues from the sinuosities of the coast. Decades later, the Klondike Gold Rush made exact territorial rights over coastal fjords incredibly valuable. Canadian lawyers argued that the French phrase crete des montagnes referred to a continuous outer mountain chain near the ocean, which would cut off interior sea access to the United States.
American negotiators contended that the coastline definition included deep inland fjords like the Lynn Canal. Minute translational discrepancies regarding whether maritime inlets counted as the physical coast created vastly different territorial claims. When the joint tribunal convened in London in 1903, British commissioner Lord Alverstone broke a diplomatic tie by voting with the two American members.
His decision prioritized the geographic realities of the original French text's intent over Britain's preferred English interpretation, permanently granting the United States control over key Alaskan ports.