As the Dutch rose to dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht became a pleasure craft used mostly by royalty and secondly by the burghers on the canals and the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing yachts was incidental, borne from private challenges. English yachting originated with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his restoration to the English monarchy 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), ordered for more yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and the same way back, on a £100 bet. Yachting became popular for the affluent and nobility, but after that point the habit did not last.
The first yacht club in the British Isles, the Water Club, was formed 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 boats was the “chase,” for which the “fleet” pursued an imaginary enemy. The club went on, largely as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, after conglomerating with other clubs, it became the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was first seen in some ordered manner 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 monarchy in 1820, it came to be named the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded following a racing fight, 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 sponsorship made the Solent – the strait between the mainland and the Isle of Wight – the continuing location of British racing. The association at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, again at the accession of George IV. Every member was required to own boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing races for high stakes were held, and the club life was lovely. Ultimately Royal Yachting Club boats were raised in size to more than 350 tons.
In North America, yachting started with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and continued when the English took control. Sailing was largely for pleasure and rose to its high point in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which sailed on the Mediterranean Sea and created a minimum of luxury and sophistication 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 instigated the New York Yacht Club while on board 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 through to the latter half of the 19th century. The style of bigger yachts was first heavily put upon by the win 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 victory at Cowes in 1851. Earlier yachts were not designed and crafted in a contemporary sense, with just a model being used. Not until the later half of the 19th century did what was known as naval architecture come into being. Not until the 1920s did the employment of the research of aerodynamics do for the structure of sails and rigging what science had done earlier for hulls.
Because most of all sailboats had to be individually manufactured, there came a desire for handicapping boats before the one-design class boats were made. Thus, a rating rule was created, which is found in the International Rule, taken on in 1906 and revised 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 standard 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 had 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.
For the time that yachting was done primarily for the aristocracy and the wealthy, expense was no problem, and the size of boats developed, in both length and weight. The ascendancy 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 trip around the world (1895–98) sailed single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray proved the hardiness of smaller yachts. Following this in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and pleasure boats became more popular, down to the dinghy, a preferred training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, craft 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 began to replace sail power in public boats, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly used in leisure craft. Sizeable power yachts were developed to a high element, and long-distance cruising became a favoured pastime of the affluent. The earliest power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; these then made way to those powered by the completely submerged screw or propeller type of propulsion. Like naval and merchant yachts, auxiliaries with both sail and power were the yacht fashion for several years. By the later half of the 20th century, several yachts were still auxiliaries, but the larger part were exclusively power yachts that had gasoline or diesel engines.
In 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 sailed by a crew of at least 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 saw active service during World War II.
As more sizeable and more reliable internal-combustion engines were produced, many large yachts were using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, with heavy oil for fuel, progressed for World War I. During the decade after that, bigger power-yacht creation grew, reaching a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. During that time the best auxiliary yacht manufactured was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The manufacture of bigger power craft fell away from 1932, and the style from then was toward smaller, less costly boats. Following World War II, a lot of small naval boats were sold to private owners for conversion to yachts. By the late 20th century, yachting is a globally popular sport enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen who are actually manning and keeping their own small recreational boats. The amount of yachts and owners increased steadily, not only in the traditional areas on the seacoasts but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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