Heroic Honey's Harbour Traditional Cache
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The legend of John Honey is a tale of heroism that has transcended the years.
The earliest references to the harbour date to the 14th century, but the estuary of the Kinness Burn was undoubtedly used before that as a natural harbour in a rather treacherous bay. Today the harbour is home to a few fishing, research and pleasure craft and has regained some of it's picturesque nature. The modern block of flats is built on the site of the former Royal George which was a fishing warehouse and the home of some fishermen. The harbour has needed rennovation many times in its history. At times using stone taken from the ruined cathedral.
On Sundays, during term time, students traditionally walk down to the end of the pier after attending chapel wearing their red cloaks. The origins of the original pier walk are somewhat obscure. Some say it started when students went to the harbour to bid farewell to some dignitary. Another legend is that it commemorates a student, John Honey, who bravely rescued people from a shipwreck off the coast
John Honey was attending Sunday morning service in the University chapel when word reached the congregation that men were in peril upon the sea just east of the harbour. The strapping six-footer left immediately to join a throng of townsfolk already surging down Kirkhill towards the water's edge.
The scene that met their gaze resembled something out of Dante's Inferno. The sloop Janet of Macduff had run ashore and was breaking up in heavy seas. The crew were clinging to the rigging, their screams for help filtering through the shrieking gale force wind.
"Suddenly a murmur of applause ran through that excited sea of human beings, as eager to save as the foaming breakers were to clutch their prey. 'He will go! He will go! He has offered!' resounded from a knot of students one of them crying 'Bring me a rope; I will try and save them', and there, pressing forward, was that stalwart young student John Honey, tearing off his clothes, heedless of the onlookers, preparing to battle with the angry sea".
Tying a rope round his waist, and with a knife stuck between his teeth, Honey struck out through a curtain of sleet and snow for the sinking vessel. But his progress was so painfully slow in the heaving water that his friends on the beach, despairing of his own life, decided to pull him back to the shore. But the young hero was determined to accomplish his task. He cut the rope and then "with the strength of young Hercules and the skill of a Leander" he reached the vessel and clambered aboard.
Fastening another rope to his body he sprang back into the sea and fought his way to the beach where he secured a lifeline for the crew. But the men were so numbed by cold and exhaustion they were unable to leave the boat unaided. Without hesitation Honey plunged again into the raging surf and over the next hour made five return trips to the sloop to bring each of the stranded seamen to safety before collapsing on the crowded sands.
Honey, who would surely have been awarded the George Cross had this highest civilian honour for bravery existed at the time, was given the Freedom of St Andrews along with that of Perth, Forfar and Auchtermuchty.
He also received the silver award of the Royal Humane Society. Today he is commemorated in the name of the university's Computational Science Block on the North Haugh and the traditional Sunday Pier walk.
At the time of his rescue, Honey was studying philosophy but shortly after switched to divinity, married a minister's daughter, and later took over the pulpit at Bendochy in Perthshire where he died in ill health at the age of 32. He had paid a high price for his courage. On his last trip to the sinking sloop he had been struck across the chest by a collapsing mast and "the seeds of a wasting consumption had been sown within him".
One other legend about the harbour, though not related to the pier walk per se, is that when women were first admitted to the university, male students threw their "mortar board" hats into the sea in protest. To this day male students at St.Andrews University do not wear these hats, even for graduation. For all the chauvinism that such a gesture implies, St. Andrews was still one of the first universities to admit women scholars.
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