As the Dutch found preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht was a pleasure craft used initially by royalty and then by the burghers in the canals and then in the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing yachts was incidental, arising as private challenges. 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 gave him a 20-metre (66-foot) leisure 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), ordered for other yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and back, on a £100 wager. Yachting became fashionable with the affluent and aristocracy, but after that time the trend did not last.
The first yacht club in the British Isles, the Water Club, was instigated in about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard group, and held large naval panoply and rigour. The closest thing to a race was the “chase,” for which the “fleet” pursued an imaginary enemy. The club persisted, for the large part as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, after merging with other organisations, it became the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was first seen in some ordered method 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 sovereignty in 1820, it was then called the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded with a racing dispute, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht group 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 perpetual location of British racing. The club at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, again at the accession of George IV. Each member was required to own boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing races for great bids were held, and the society life was lovely. Eventually 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 gained power. Sailing was mostly for pleasure and rose to 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 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 instigated the New York Yacht Club while aboard his schooner Gimcrack.
Kinds of sailboats
The Early sailing yachts were within the style of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through to the second half of the 19th century. The style of sizeable yachts was first heavily affected by the win 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.) had its namesake after its success at Cowes in 1851. Earlier yachts were not designed and crafted in a contemporary sense, with merely a model being 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 study of aerodynamics do for the design of sails and rigging what such study had earlier done for hulls.
Because nearly all sailboats had to be individually built, there came a desire for handicapping boats as this was before the one-design class boats were made. Therefore, a rating rule was written, which ended up in the International Rule, taken on in 1906 and revised in 1919. Today, one of the most rapidly flourishing areas in 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 elements (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing for such boats can be done on an even basis with no handicapping at all. A great example is the generic 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 aristocracy and the affluent, expense was no issue, and the size of boats developed, in both length and weight. The promotion and preference of smaller craft came 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 voyage around the world (1895–98) led single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray proved the value of smaller craft. Thereafter in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and leisure boats became commonplace, down to the dinghy, a favourite training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, boats of less than 3 m were traveled in single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.
Kinds of power yachts
Post the decade 1840–50, at which point steam began to replace sail power in public vessels, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were employed more and more in leisure boats. Large power yachts were progressed to a high degree, and long-distance travel became a fond occupation of the wealthy. The earliest power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then gave way to yachts 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 many years. By the later half of the 20th century, a lot of yachts were still auxiliaries, but the large part were solely power yachts with gasoline or diesel engines.
From the last decade of the 19th century there was a rise in the manufacture of large steam yachts. In particular of these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, that had triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was operated by a crew of more than 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 was used in active service for World War II.
As bigger and more dependable internal-combustion engines were produced, many large craft began using them for power. The creation of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, was furthered for World War I. During the decade that followed, bigger power-yacht manufacture blossomed, reaching a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. During that time the largest auxiliary yacht manufactured was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The construction of big power craft fell away after 1932, and the style after that was for smaller, less pricey craft. Following World War II, many small naval craft were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting had become a widespread beloved activity enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen individually sailing and maintaining their own small pleasure yachts. The popularity of craft and owners is increasing steadily, not only in the traditional places on the beach but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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