As the Dutch rose to dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the initial yacht was a leisure craft used mostly by royalty and later by the burghers in the canals as well as the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing was incidental, coming out of private challenges. English yachting began with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his restoration 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 then 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 the same way back, on a £100 punt. Yachting rose as classy among the wealthy and nobility, but after that time the fashion did not last.
The first yacht group in the British Isles, the Water Club, was instigated around about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard organization, and had much naval panoply and rigour. The closest thing to racing was the “chase,” when the “fleet” pursued a fictional enemy. The club endured, mostly as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, by conglomerating with other clubs, it became known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing began in some ordered method on the Thames in the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland funded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV rose to sovereignty in 1820, it was then named 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 perpetual site of British yachting. The organisation at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, likewise at the ascension of George IV. Every member was required to possess boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing races for large stakes were held, and the social life was splendid. It came to be that the Royal Yachting Club boats were raised 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 went on when the English took dominance. Sailing was largely for leisure and found its epitome in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which cruised 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 continuing American yacht group, the Detroit Boat Club, was formed in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens founded the New York Yacht Club while aboard his schooner Gimcrack.
Kinds of sailboats
Early sailing yachts were within the design of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through the latter half of the 19th century. The craft of sizeable yachts was initially heavily affected by the victory of America, which was drawn by George Steers for a group led by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) was named after its win at Cowes in 1851. Earlier yachts were not designed and manufactured in the modern sense, with only a model for an outline. Not until the second half of the 19th century did what was called naval architecture come into action. Not until the 1920s did the use of the science of aerodynamics do for the craft of sails and rigging what such study had already done for hulls.
Because most of all sailboats had been individually custom-built, there arose a desire for handicapping boats before the one-design class boats were designed. Hence, a rating rule came into being, which is found in the International Rule, taken on in 1906 and edited in 1919. In modern times, one of the fastest flourishing areas in sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are created to the same requirements in length, beam, sail area, and other aspects (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing between these boats can be held on an even basis with no handicapping required. 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 belonged primarily for the aristocracy and the wealthy, cost was no object, and the size of boats grew, in both length and weight. The ascendancy and popularity of smaller yachts came in the latter 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) captained single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray demonstrated the seaworthiness of smaller yachts. Following this in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and pleasure craft became more common, down to the dinghy, a favoured 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, during which steam began to take the place of sail power in commercial boats, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly used in leisure yachts. Bigger power yachts were furthered to a high element, and long-distance sailing became a fond occupation of the affluent. The earliest power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then gave way to yachts powered by the completely submerged screw or propeller sort of propulsion. As well as naval and merchant yachts, auxiliaries possessing both sail and power were the yacht archetype for a number of years. By the second half of the 20th century, many yachts were still auxiliaries, but the large part were only power yachts containing gasoline or diesel engines.
In the last decade of the 19th century there was a push in the construction of more sizeable 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 manned 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 gave active service for World War II.
As bigger and better quality internal-combustion engines were developed, many bigger boats were using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, was furthered in World War I. From the decade that followed, large power-yacht creation flourished, hitting a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. From that point the best auxiliary yacht built was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The construction of larger power craft lessened after 1932, and the fashion after that was toward smaller, less pricey boats. Following World War II, a lot of small naval boats were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting is a internationally popular sport enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen personally owning and keeping their own small pleasure yachts. The number of yachts and sailors increased steadily, not only in the traditional areas by the beach but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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