As the Dutch rose to preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht had been a pleasure craft used mostly by royalty and later by the burghers on the canals and the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Yacht racing was incidental, arising as 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 gave him 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, 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 rose as fashionable with the affluent and royalty, but after that point the trend did not last.
The first yacht association in the British Isles, the Water Club, was formed around about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard group, with large naval panoply and gravity. The closest thing to a race was the “chase,” in which the “fleet” pursued an imaginary enemy. The club persisted, for the large part as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, when conglomerating with other organisations, it was known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was first seen in some ordered manner 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 the throne in 1820, it came to be called the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded after a racing fight, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht group 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 location of British yacht racing. The club at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, also at the ascension of George IV. All members were required to possess boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing races for large stakes were held, and the club life was splendid. It came to be that the Royal Yachting Club boats increased in size to bigger than 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 largely for leisure and rose to its apogee in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which sailed on the Mediterranean Sea and set a benchmark of luxury and sophistication for the later yachts in those waters from the late 19th century. The first persisting 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
The 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 craft of large yachts was originally largely put upon by the win of America, which was designed by George Steers for a association headed by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) had its namesake after its win at Cowes in 1851. Early yachts were not designed and built in the modern sense, with merely a model used. Not until the latter half of the 19th century did what was known as naval architecture come into action. Not until the 1920s did the use of the research of aerodynamics do for the design of sails and rigging what such study had previously done for hulls.
Because almost all sailboats were individually manufactured, there was a desire for handicapping boats as this was before the one-design class boats were made. Therefore, a rating rule was written, which resulted in the International Rule, taken on in 1906 and edited in 1919. Today, 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 standard requirements in length, beam, sail area, and other elements (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing for such boats can be done on an even par with no handicapping required. A perfect 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 an activity primarily for the nobility and the affluent, expense was no issue, and the size of boats grew, in both length and weight. The promotion and preference of smaller craft happened in the second half of the 19th century in 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) led single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray made plain the hardiness of smaller craft. Later in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and leisure craft became more common, down to the dinghy, a favourite 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
Following the decade 1840–50, at which point steam started to replace sail power in public boats, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were used increasingly in pleasure yachts. Sizeable power yachts were developed to a high standard, and long-distance sailing became a fond pastime of the rich. The first power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; they then made way to boats powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. As in the case of naval and merchant vessels, auxiliaries carrying both sail and power were the yacht archetype for several years. By the second 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.
In the last decade of the 19th century there was a boom in the construction of more sizeable steam yachts. Conspicuous within these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, containing 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 for World War II.
As larger and better quality internal-combustion engines were developed, many big craft began using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, using heavy oil for fuel, was furthered in World War I. During the decade that followed, large power-yacht building blossomed, reaching a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. From that point the best auxiliary yacht manufactured was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The building of big power yachts lessened from 1932, and the trend after that was toward smaller, less costly yachts. From 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 activity enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen personally manning and keeping their own small recreational yachts. The amount of boats and owners is increasing steadily, not only in the traditional locations along the seacoasts but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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