As the Dutch rose to dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the initial yacht had been a leisure craft used initially by royalty and secondly by the burghers for the canals as well as the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing yachts 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 reaffirmation to the English monarchy 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, sovereign 1685–88), built additional yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and returning, on a £100 punt. Yachting became popular among the wealthy and aristocracy, but after that period 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 group, and had great naval panoply and formality. The closest thing to racing was the “chase,” for which the “fleet” pursued an imagined enemy. The club went on, largely as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, when merging with other groups, it was known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was first seen in some ordered fashion on the Thames about the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland funded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV ascended to monarchy in 1820, it came to be called 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 group had been formed at Cowes on the Isle of Wight in 1815, and royal patronage made the Solent – the strait between the mainland and the Isle of Wight – the continued setting of British yacht racing. The society at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, likewise at the accession of George IV. Each member was required to possess boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing matches for high bets were held, and the society life was superlative. Ultimately Royal Yachting Club boats increased in size to over 350 tons.
In North America, yachting started with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and persisted when the English gained power. Sailing was for the most part for pleasure and reached its epitome in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which cruised on the Mediterranean Sea and set a benchmark of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in that area from the late 19th century. The first continuing American yacht organisation, the Detroit Boat Club, was instigated in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens founded the New York Yacht Club while on board his schooner Gimcrack.
Kinds of sailboats
The Early sailing yachts were within the style of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century until the later half of the 19th century. The craft of large yachts was first greatly affected by the success of America, which was drawn by George Steers for a syndicate led 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. The first yachts were not designed and manufactured in the modern sense, with merely a model used. Not until the latter half of the 19th century did what was labeled naval architecture come into being. Not until the 1920s did the use of the research of aerodynamics do for the design of sails and rigging what science had already done for hulls.
Because nearly all sailboats were individually manufactured, there was a desire for handicapping boats as this was before the one-design class boats were designed. Therefore, a rating rule came into being, which is found in the International Rule, adopted in 1906 and amended in 1919. In the present day, one of the fastest flourishing areas in the sailing industry is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are created to single requirements in length, beam, sail area, and other aspects (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing for those boats can be held on an even keel with no handicapping necessary. A great example is the generic International America’s Cup Class adopted for participants in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
So long as yachting was done mostly for the royal and the rich, expense was no issue, and the size of boats grew, in both length and weight. The rise and popularity of smaller craft happened in the second 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 trip around the world (1895–98) led single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray made plain the value of less sizeable yachts. Thereafter in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and recreational yachts became commonplace, 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
After the decade 1840–50, in which steam started to replace sail power in public boats, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were favoured increasingly in leisure vessels. Bigger power yachts were furthered to a high degree, and long-distance sailing turned into a fond activity of the affluent. The first power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; they then gave way to boats powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. Like naval and merchant craft, auxiliaries carrying both sail and power were the yacht standard for several years. By the later half of the 20th century, several 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 rise in the construction of bigger steam yachts. Notably among 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, bought 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 reliable internal-combustion engines were developed, many big craft were using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, with heavy oil for fuel, advanced from World War I. From the decade following that, big power-yacht manufacture grew, hitting a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. During that period the biggest auxiliary yacht manufactured was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The construction of large power boats fell away after 1932, and the style thereafter was in preference of smaller, less expensive craft. Following World War II, lots of small naval craft were bought by private owners for conversion to yachts. In the late 20th century, yachting is a internationally popular activity enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen individually owning and upkeeping their own small recreational craft. The amount of craft and yachtsmen increased steadily, not only in the traditional areas on the sea but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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