As the Dutch came to preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht had been a leisure craft used initially by royalty and secondly by the burghers for the canals and the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing yachts was incidental, borne from private matches. English yachting started with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his reaffirmation to the English royalty in 1660, the city of Amsterdam sent him a 20-metre (66-foot) leisure boat with a beam (maximum width) of 5.6 m (18 feet), which he called Mary. Charles and his brother James, the duke of York (James II, sovereign 1685–88), ordered for additional yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and the same way back, on a £100 wager. Yachting was found to be fashionable for the wealthy and royalty, but after that point the trend did not last.
The first yacht club in the British Isles, the Water Club, was formed at about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard organization, with large naval panoply and rigour. The closest thing to racing boats was the “chase,” for which the “fleet” pursued a fictional enemy. The club persisted, 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 began in some stipulated manner on the Thames around the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland instigated the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV ascended to the throne in 1820, it was then named 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 club had been formed 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 continued location of British yacht racing. The society at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, also at the accession of George IV. Each member was required to own boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing races for large bets were held, and the social life was lovely. Eventually Royal Yachting Club boats grew 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 leisure and found its apogee in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which sailed on the Mediterranean Sea and established a benchmark of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in the area from the late 19th century. The first persisting American yacht organisation, the Detroit Boat Club, was formed in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens began the New York Yacht Club while aboard his schooner Gimcrack.
Kinds of sailboats
Early sailing yachts were within the style of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through the latter half of the 19th century. The craft of large yachts was originally greatly put upon by the success of America, which was designed by George Steers for a group started 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. Early yachts were not designed and manufactured in today’s sense, with just a model used. Not until the second half of the 19th century did what was labeled naval architecture come about. Not until the 1920s did the application of the research of aerodynamics do for the structure of sails and rigging what it had done earlier for hulls.
Because most of all sailboats were individually manufactured, there came a requirement 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, taken on in 1906 and edited in 1919. In modern times, one of the rapidly flourishing areas in sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are manufactured to standard specifications in length, beam, sail area, and other elements (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing for such boats can be held on an even playing field with no handicapping at all. A perfect example is the uniform International America’s Cup Class taken on board for yachts in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
So long as yachting was an activity primarily for the royal and the rich, money was no object, and the size of boats increased, in both length and weight. The promotion and desire of smaller craft occurred in the second half of the 19th century from the sailing of the Englishmen R.T. McMullen, a stockbroker, and E.F. Knight, a barrister and journalist. A journey around the world (1895–98) captained single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray proved the seaworthiness of less sizeable boats. Later in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and recreational boats became more popular, down to the dinghy, a favoured 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, in which steam was set to emulate sail power in market vessels, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly used in personal craft. Bigger power yachts were developed to a high standard, and long-distance cruising became a favourite occupation of the wealthy. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then gave way to those powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller sort of propulsion. Like naval and merchant boats, 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 large part were solely power yachts with gasoline or diesel engines.
In the last decade of the 19th century there was a rise in the manufacture 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 sailed by a crew of over 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 more sizeable and better quality internal-combustion engines were developed, many big boats were using them for power. The establishment of the diesel engine, with heavy oil for fuel, was furthered during World War I. In the decade after that, bigger power-yacht building flourished, climaxing in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. In that time the largest auxiliary yacht manufactured was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The construction of larger power yachts declined in 1932, and the trend thereafter was for smaller, less costly craft. From World War II, a lot of small naval craft were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. In the late 20th century, yachting is a widespread popular activity enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen individually sailing and upkeeping their own small leisure craft. The popularity of yachts and owners has increased steadily, not only in the traditional areas on the sea but also on inland waterways and lakes.
Looking for boat transport Gold Coast ? Talk to Elite Yacht Services. We do great work at competitive prices.