As the Dutch rose to preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht was a pleasure craft used initially by royalty and secondly by the burghers on the canals and then in the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Yacht racing 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 restoration to the English royalty in 1660, the city of Amsterdam presented him with a 20-metre (66-foot) pleasure boat with a beam (maximum width) of 5.6 m (18 feet), which he called Mary. Charles and his brother James, the duke of York (James II, ruled 1685–88), built more yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and back, on a £100 bet. Yachting rose as classy for the rich and aristocracy, but after that period the trend did not last.
The first yacht club in the British Isles, the Water Club, was started around about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard association, with great naval panoply and gravity. The closest thing to racing was the “chase,” in which the “fleet” pursued an imaginary enemy. The club persisted, largely as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, by conglomerating with other clubs, it became known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was first seen in some stipulated fashion on the Thames about the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland instigated the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV rose to monarchy in 1820, it was then named the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded following a racing argument, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht society 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 continued setting of British yacht racing. The association at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, again at the rise of George IV. All members were required to have boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing tests for high bets were held, and the club life was superlative. Ultimately Royal Yachting Club boats grew in size to over 350 tons.
In North America, yachting began with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and went on when the English gained power. Sailing was largely for pleasure and rose to its high point in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which cruised on the Mediterranean Sea and set a standard of luxury and sophistication for the later yachts in that area from the late 19th century. The first enduring American yacht club, the Detroit Boat Club, was instigated in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens began the New York Yacht Club while on board his schooner Gimcrack.
Kinds of sailboats
The first sailing yachts took the design of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through to the latter half of the 19th century. The craft of large yachts was initially largely put upon by the success of America, which was designed by George Steers for a syndicate led 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 a contemporary sense, with just a model being used. Not until the second half of the 19th century did what was labeled naval architecture come into action. Not until the 1920s did the use of the science of aerodynamics do for the design of sails and rigging what such science had earlier done for hulls.
Because most of all sailboats were individually custom-built, there came a desire for handicapping boats as this was previous to the one-design class boats were made. Thus, a rating rule was created, which is found in the International Rule, accepted in 1906 and amended in 1919. In the present day, one of the rapidly flourishing areas in sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are built to single dimensions in length, beam, sail area, and other aspects (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing such boats can be done on an even playing field with no handicapping required. A perfect example is the uniform International America’s Cup Class taken on board for participants in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
So long as yachting belonged largely for the aristocracy and the rich, money was no object, and the size of boats developed, in both length and weight. The promotion and desire of smaller yachts occurred in the latter half of the 19th century from the sailing of the Englishmen R.T. McMullen, a stockbroker, and E.F. Knight, a barrister and journalist. A journey around the world (1895–98) led single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray made plain the seaworthiness of less sizeable yachts. Later in the 20th century, notably after World War II, smaller racing and pleasure craft became more common, down to the dinghy, a preferred training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, yachts of less than 3 m were setting sail single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.
Kinds of power yachts
Post the decade 1840–50, when steam was set to take the place of sail power in commercial craft, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly favoured in leisure boats. Sizeable power yachts were developed to a high degree, and long-distance sailing was a favoured occupation of the well off. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then made way to boats powered by the fully submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. Like naval and merchant vessels, auxiliaries possessing both sail and power were the yacht standard for many years. By the later half of the 20th century, a lot of yachts were still auxiliaries, but the majority were solely power yachts that had gasoline or diesel engines.
In the last decade of the 19th century there was a push in the construction of bigger steam yachts. Conspicuous of these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, containing triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was sailed by a crew of over 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 gave active service in World War II.
As larger and more dependable internal-combustion engines were produced, many big yachts began using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, progressed in World War I. In the decade that followed, bigger power-yacht manufacture blossomed, hitting a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. From that point the largest auxiliary yacht built was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The manufacture of large power boats lessened from 1932, and the fashion after that was in preference of smaller, less pricey boats. After World War II, a lot of small naval craft were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. By the late 20th century, yachting has become a globally popular sport enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen who are actually sailing and upkeeping their own small recreational craft. The amount of boats and owners has increased steadily, not only in the traditional places by the beach but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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