The Difficult Days at Patience Camp

This entry from Orde-Lees Journal provides a picture of what the Endurance crew was doing to keep themselves productively busy during the tedious and difficult days at Patience Camp as they were waiting for the ice-floe to break up.

Lees gives us a picture of the leader he admires who was "delighted with" his efforts and mentions that Shackleton is still optimistic about the outcome. At least that was what Shackleton was telling his team.

Shackleton once said, “You often have to hide from them not only the truth, but your feelings about the truth. You may know that the facts are dead against you, but you mustn’t say so.”

#Leadership #MaintainingAPositiveAttitude #CommunicatingEffectively #KeepingUpMorale

#Optimism #LeadingByExample

Saturday, 4 March, 1916

Fine, very cold weather continues.

I have been very busy all these last two days cutting up Sir Ernest's knitted woollen sleeping bag lining and using it to line his pyjama jacket.  I managed it fairly well, sleeves and all, cutting out the pieces by the pattern of the jacket itself, but as the latter was somewhat longer than the available width of the material I had a certain amount of joining up to do to eke out sufficient of the stuff to form the yoke and the shoulder gussets.  To prevent its becoming too lumpy at the axis of the arms he scalloped out a piece the shape of a "dress preserver" both inside the sleeve and in the adjacent flank.  Sir Ernest expressed himself delighted with the result, and though the "dog-stitches" would shame a board-school child, as long as he is satisfied all is well.

Indeed there is no better occupation to fill up the time of this long weary wait.

The felt boots that members have recently been making are quite a success and, having fixed on "Durhide" soles, cut from an old sledge-tank made of that material, they are now quite strong enough for good long walks round the floe on the hard path that has been formed by the perpetual circumambulations of our little party.  This path is roughly a circle of 1200 yards circumference, and forms an excellent track for exercising both ourselves and the dog teams in fair weather.

Sir Ernest is still confident that we shall reach Paulet, or Deception Island, via Bransfield Straits, at an early date.