The Cape Expedition was the deliberately misleading name given to a secret five-year wartime program of establishing coastwatching stations on New Zealand's more distant uninhabited subantarctic islands.

[1] It was suspected that the 6,000-ton German merchant vessel Erlangen, which had sailed from Dunedin, supposedly for Australia, on 26 August 1939 – shortly before war had been declared in Europe – had, instead, supplemented her meagre coal reserves with timber from the Auckland Islands and headed for South America.

The suspicion was later confirmed when the first coastwatchers in the program found areas of newly cut southern rātā forest at Carnley Harbour on Auckland Island.

As well as their primary task of keeping their eyes on the sea for ships, the men (no women were involved) carried out surveys, took weather measurements, and made observations and collections of the wildlife of the islands.

[1][2] A popular recreational activity, which also supplied fresh meat to supplement the preserved food rations, was hunting the introduced species of wildlife on the islands.