As the Dutch rose to dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht had been a pleasure craft used first 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, arising as private challenges. English yachting originated with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his return to the English monarchy 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 then named 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 wager. Yachting rose as fashionable with the affluent and royalty, but after that time the fashion did not last.
The first yacht club in the British Isles, the Water Club, was instigated in about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard organization, and held much naval panoply and rigour. The closest thing to a race was the “chase,” for which the “fleet” pursued an imagined enemy. The club persisted, mostly as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, after joining with other clubs, it became known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was first seen in some ordered fashion on the Thames in the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland founded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV rose to sovereignty in 1820, it was named the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded after a racing dispute, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht organisation had been started at Cowes on the Isle of Wight in 1815, and royal sponsorship made the Solent – the strait between the mainland and the Isle of Wight – the continued setting of British yachting. The society at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, also at the rise of George IV. All members were required to have boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing matches for great stakes were held, and the social life was lovely. It came to be that the Royal Yachting Club boats grew in size to over 350 tons.
In North America, yachting started with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and continued when the English held power. Sailing was mostly for leisure and reached its high point in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which sailed on the Mediterranean Sea and established a standard of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in the area from the late 19th century. The first persisting American yacht club, the Detroit Boat Club, was instigated in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens instigated the New York Yacht Club while on board his schooner Gimcrack.
Kinds of sailboats
Early sailing yachts were within the lines of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through to the later half of the 19th century. The craft of large yachts was originally largely impacted by the victory of America, which was designed by George Steers for a club started by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) found its namesake after its victory at Cowes in 1851. Early yachts were not designed and crafted in the modern sense, with only a model being used. Not until the later half of the 19th century did what was called naval architecture come into action. Not until the 1920s did the application of the study of aerodynamics do for the design of sails and rigging what such science had already done for hulls.
Because almost all sailboats were individually built, there came a requirement for handicapping boats as this was before the one-design class boats were built. Hence, a rating rule was written, which ended up in the International Rule, accepted in 1906 and edited in 1919. In the present day, one of the rapidly growing areas in the field of sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are manufactured to single specifications in length, beam, sail area, and other elements (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing between such boats can be held on an even playing field with no handicapping necessary. A great example is the uniform International America’s Cup Class taken on board for yachts in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
As long as yachting belonged largely for the aristocracy and the wealthy, money was no problem, and the size of boats increased, in both length and weight. The rise and desire of smaller boats came in the later 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 hardiness of smaller boats. Following this in the 20th century, particularly after World War II, smaller racing and recreational boats became more popular, down to the dinghy, a popular 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
Post the decade 1840–50, when steam was set to emulate sail power in public craft, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were employed more and more in personal vessels. Bigger power yachts were progressed to a high standard, and long-distance sailing became a fond occupation of the affluent. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; they then gave rise to yachts powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. As well as naval and merchant vessels, auxiliaries carrying both sail and power were the yacht standard for several years. By the later half of the 20th century, a lot of yachts were still auxiliaries, but the larger part were exclusively power yachts that had gasoline or diesel engines.
During the last decade of the 19th century there was a push in the construction of large steam yachts. In particular among these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, containing triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was operated by a crew of at least 150. The Mayflower, commissioned by the United States Navy in 1898, was the official yacht of the president of the United States until 1929 and was used in active service during World War II.
As bigger and more dependable internal-combustion engines were produced, many big boats were using them for power. The creation of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, was furthered for World War I. During the decade that followed, bigger power-yacht building blossomed, hitting a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. In that time the largest auxiliary yacht constructed was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The manufacture of big power craft declined from 1932, and the fashion after that was for smaller, less costly boats. From World War II, many small naval craft were sold to private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting had become a globally loved competition enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen who are actually manning and upkeeping their own small leisure yachts. The amount of yachts and yachtsmen is increasing steadily, not only in the traditional areas on the sea but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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