As the Dutch found dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht was a leisure craft used mostly by royalty and later by the burghers in the canals as well as the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing yachts was incidental, coming out of private matches. English yachting originated with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his return to the English throne in 1660, the city of Amsterdam presented him with a 20-metre (66-foot) leisure boat with a beam (maximum width) of 5.6 m (18 feet), which he named Mary. Charles and his brother James, the duke of York (James II, reigned 1685–88), built more yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and back, on a £100 punt. Yachting rose as popular among the affluent and nobility, but after that time the habit did not last.
The first yacht group in the British Isles, the Water Club, was started around about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard organization, and held great naval panoply and gravity. The closest thing to racing was the “chase,” when the “fleet” pursued an imaginary enemy. The club went on, mostly as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, when conglomerating with other societies, it was known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was seen in some stipulated manner on the Thames in the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland instigated the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV ascended to sovereignty in 1820, it was named the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded after a racing fight, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht organisation had been formed at Cowes on the Isle of Wight in 1815, and royal funding made the Solent – the strait between the mainland and the Isle of Wight – the continuing location of British yachting. The organisation at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, likewise at the rise of George IV. Each member was required to own boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing matches for great bets were held, and the social life was superlative. It came to be that the Royal Yachting Club boats grew in size to over 350 tons.
In North America, yachting was first accomplished with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and continued when the English gained power. Sailing was largely for fun and rose to its apogee in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which cruised on the Mediterranean Sea and established a standard of luxury and sophistication for the later yachts in the area from the late 19th century. The first continuing American yacht society, the Detroit Boat Club, was started in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens began the New York Yacht Club while aboard his schooner Gimcrack.
Kinds of sailboats
Early sailing yachts took the design of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century until the later half of the 19th century. The design of bigger yachts was initially largely affected by the win of America, which was designed by George Steers for a group headed by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) was named after its win at Cowes in 1851. Early yachts were not designed and manufactured in today’s sense, with merely a model being used. Not until the later half of the 19th century did what was labeled naval architecture come into action. Not until the 1920s did the employment of the science of aerodynamics do for the design of sails and rigging what such science had done earlier for hulls.
Because almost all sailboats had been individually manufactured, there was a need for handicapping boats before the one-design class boats were designed. Therefore, a rating rule was created, which is found in the International Rule, accepted in 1906 and amended in 1919. In modern times, one of the rapidly flourishing areas in the field of sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are created to the same specifications in length, beam, sail area, and other areas (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing between such boats can be held on an even par with no handicapping at all. A prime example is the uniform International America’s Cup Class adopted for yachts in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
As long as yachting belonged primarily for the royal and the rich, money was no object, and the size of boats developed, in both length and weight. The promotion and preference of smaller boats happened in the later half of the 19th century in the sailing of the Englishmen R.T. McMullen, a stockbroker, and E.F. Knight, a barrister and journalist. A voyage around the world (1895–98) captained single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray proved the value of small boats. Following this in the 20th century, particularly after World War II, smaller racing and leisure yachts became commonplace, down to the dinghy, a preferred training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, craft of less than 3 m were sailed single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.
Kinds of power yachts
Following the decade 1840–50, in which steam started to replace sail power in market boats, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were employed increasingly in leisure vessels. Large power yachts were progressed to a high standard, and long-distance travel turned into a favourite occupation of the affluent. The earliest power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; they then made way to boats powered by the fully submerged screw or propeller type of propulsion. As in the case of naval and merchant craft, auxiliaries carrying both sail and power were the yacht archetype for many years. By the later half of the 20th century, a lot of yachts were still auxiliaries, but the larger part were solely power yachts containing gasoline or diesel engines.
In the last decade of the 19th century there was a push in the manufacture of bigger steam yachts. In particular within these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, with triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was manned by a crew of more than 150. The Mayflower, purchased by the United States Navy in 1898, was the official yacht of the president of the United States until 1929 and saw active service for World War II.
As more sizeable and more dependable internal-combustion engines were developed, many bigger yachts were using them for power. The creation of the diesel engine, using heavy oil for fuel, advanced for World War I. In the decade that followed, big power-yacht creation flourished, climaxing in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. During that period the best auxiliary yacht manufactured was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The building of larger power boats fell away from 1932, and the fashion thereafter was for smaller, less costly boats. After World War II, many small naval vessels were bought by private owners for conversion to yachts. By the late 20th century, yachting has become a widespread beloved sport enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen personally manning and maintaining their own small recreational craft. The number of craft and owners increased steadily, not only in the traditional areas by the beach but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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