As the Dutch found preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht had been a pleasure craft used mostly by royalty and secondly by the burghers in the canals and then in the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing yachts was incidental, borne from private challenges. English yachting started with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his return to the English monarchy in 1660, the city of Amsterdam presented him with 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, reigned 1685–88), made more yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and returning, on a £100 bet. Yachting rose as fashionable among the wealthy and royalty, but after that time the trend did not last.
The first yacht association in the British Isles, the Water Club, was instigated in about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard association, with great naval panoply and rigour. The closest thing to a race 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 societies, it became the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was seen in some stipulated 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 came to monarchy in 1820, it was then called 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 patronage made the Solent – the strait between the mainland and the Isle of Wight – the perpetual setting of British yacht racing. The association 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 great stakes were held, and the society life was splendid. Ultimately Royal Yachting Club boats grew in size to more 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 fun and found its apogee in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which cruised on the Mediterranean Sea and established a standard of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in the area from the late 19th century. The first persisting American yacht club, the Detroit Boat Club, was instigated in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens instigated the New York Yacht Club while aboard his schooner Gimcrack.
Kinds of sailboats
The Early sailing yachts took 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 sizeable yachts was first heavily affected by the victory of America, which was created by George Steers for a group headed by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) had its namesake after its victory at Cowes in 1851. Early yachts were not designed and built in today’s sense, with merely a model for an outline. Not until the second half of the 19th century did what was labeled naval architecture come about. Not until the 1920s did the use of the science of aerodynamics do for the craft of sails and rigging what such science had already done for hulls.
Because almost all sailboats were individually manufactured, there was a desire for handicapping boats previous to the one-design class boats were made. Therefore, a rating rule was decreed, which is found in the International Rule, taken on in 1906 and amended in 1919. Today, one of the most rapidly blossoming areas in the field of sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are built to standard dimensions in length, beam, sail area, and other aspects (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing these boats can be held on an even basis with no handicapping at all. A great example is the uniform International America’s Cup Class taken on board for participants in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
As long as yachting was an activity largely for the aristocracy and the rich, expense was no problem, and the size of boats grew, in both length and weight. The rise and preference of smaller craft came in the latter 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 voyage around the world (1895–98) led single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray demonstrated the value of small boats. Thereafter in the 20th century, particularly after World War II, smaller racing and recreational boats became more common, down to the dinghy, a favoured training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, craft of less than 3 m were traveled in single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.
Kinds of power yachts
Following the decade 1840–50, when steam began to replace sail power in market boats, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly employed in leisure boats. Large power yachts were furthered to a high degree, and long-distance sailing turned into a preferred activity of the affluent. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; these then gave way to boats powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller sort of propulsion. Like naval and merchant vessels, auxiliaries with both sail and power were the yacht standard for a number of years. By the second half of the 20th century, a lot of yachts were still auxiliaries, but the large part were only power yachts with gasoline or diesel engines.
From 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 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 saw active service in World War II.
As more sizeable and more reliable internal-combustion engines were developed, many large yachts were using them for power. The creation of the diesel engine, with heavy oil for fuel, was furthered during World War I. In the decade after that, big power-yacht building flourished, reaching a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. In that time the best auxiliary yacht built was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The construction of big power yachts lessened in 1932, and the trend thereafter was in preference of smaller, less costly boats. After World War II, many small naval boats were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting had become a internationally popular sport enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen who are actually owning and keeping their own small recreational craft. The amount of craft and sailors is increasing steadily, not only in the traditional places by the beach but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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