Yachting and Yacht Clubs
As the Dutch came to dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the initial yacht had been a leisure craft used initially by royalty and then by the burghers for the canals and the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Yacht racing was incidental, coming out of private games. English yachting began with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his return to the English royalty in 1660, the city of Amsterdam sent him a 20-metre (66-foot) pleasure 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, sovereign 1685–88), made other yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and back, on a £100 punt. Yachting was found to be fashionable for the wealthy and royalty, but after that point the trend did not last.
The first yacht group in the British Isles, the Water Club, was instigated in about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard association, and held large naval panoply and gravity. The closest thing to a race was the “chase,” in which the “fleet” pursued a fictional enemy. The club went on, for the large part as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, when merging with other organisations, it became the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing began in some stipulated method on the Thames about the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland founded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV rose to monarchy in 1820, it came to be known as the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded with a racing argument, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht association had been initiated 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 racing. The club at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, likewise at the ascension of George IV. Each member was required to own boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing tests for great bets were held, and the social life was lovely. Ultimately Royal Yachting Club boats grew in size to bigger than 350 tons.
In North America, yachting was first accomplished with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and continued when the English held control. Sailing was for the most part for pleasure and reached its apogee in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which traveled on the Mediterranean Sea and established a minimum of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in that area from the late 19th century. The first continuing American yacht association, the Detroit Boat Club, was started in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens founded the New York Yacht Club while aboard his schooner Gimcrack.
Kinds of sailboats
The first sailing yachts took the lines of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through to the latter half of the 19th century. The style of large yachts was originally greatly affected by the victory of America, which was drawn by George Steers for a association led by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) was named after its victory at Cowes in 1851. The first yachts were not designed and crafted in today’s sense, with just a model for an outline. Not until the second half of the 19th century did what was labeled naval architecture come into being. Not until the 1920s did the use of the study of aerodynamics do for the craft of sails and rigging what such science had earlier done for hulls.
Because most of all sailboats had to be individually built, there arose a requirement for handicapping boats before the one-design class boats were designed. Thus, a rating rule came into being, which resulted in the International Rule, adopted in 1906 and amended in 1919. In modern times, one of the fastest blossoming areas in sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are manufactured to single requirements in length, beam, sail area, and other areas (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing such boats can be done on an even playing field with no handicapping at all. A perfect example is the generic International America’s Cup Class taken on board for racers in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
For the time that yachting belonged primarily for the aristocracy and the affluent, money was no problem, and the size of boats increased, in both length and weight. The promotion and desire of smaller boats occurred in the later half of the 19th century out of 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) sailed single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray made plain the seaworthiness of small boats. Following this in the 20th century, notably after World War II, smaller racing and pleasure boats became more common, down to the dinghy, a popular training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, yachts of less than 3 m were traveled in single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.
Kinds of power yachts
Following the decade 1840–50, during which steam was set to take the place of sail power in public boats, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were used increasingly in leisure yachts. Large power yachts were progressed to a high degree, and long-distance cruising was a favoured occupation of the rich. The first power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; they then gave way to yachts powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. As well as naval and merchant yachts, auxiliaries with both sail and power were the yacht fashion for many years. By the latter half of the 20th century, a lot of yachts were still auxiliaries, but the larger part were exclusively power yachts containing gasoline or diesel engines.
From the last decade of the 19th century there was a rise in the design of more sizeable steam yachts. In particular of 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 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 saw active service in World War II.
As bigger and better quality internal-combustion engines were developed, many large boats started using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, was furthered for World War I. During the decade following that, large power-yacht creation flourished, reaching a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. During that point the largest auxiliary yacht built was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The building of large power yachts lessened in 1932, and the style from then was toward smaller, less expensive craft. Following World War II, many small naval craft were sold to private owners for conversion to yachts. By the late 20th century, yachting had become a widespread beloved competition enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen individually owning and maintaining their own small recreational yachts. The amount of craft and yachtsmen has increased steadily, not only in the traditional locations on the beach but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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