As the Dutch came to preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht was a leisure craft used first by royalty and secondly by the burghers for the canals as well as the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing yachts was incidental, coming out of private matches. English yachting started with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his restoration to the English throne 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 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 bet. Yachting became popular among the rich and nobility, but after that period the habit did not last.
The first yacht group in the British Isles, the Water Club, was formed at about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard group, with great naval panoply and rigour. The closest thing to racing was the “chase,” for which the “fleet” pursued an imagined enemy. The club persisted, largely as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, after conglomerating with other organisations, it became 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 sovereignty in 1820, it came to be 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 organisation 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 perpetual location of British yacht racing. The association at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, again at the ascension of George IV. Each member was required to possess boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing races for great stakes were held, and the society life was lovely. Eventually Royal Yachting Club boats were raised in size to over 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 gained dominance. Sailing was largely for fun and reached its high point in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which sailed on the Mediterranean Sea and set a minimum of luxury and sophistication for the later yachts in those waters from the late 19th century. The first continuing American yacht society, 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
The first sailing yachts took the style of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century until the latter half of the 19th century. The style of large yachts was initially largely put upon by the victory of America, which was drawn 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 success at Cowes in 1851. Early yachts were not designed and manufactured in a contemporary sense, with only a model being used. Not until the later half of the 19th century did what was labeled naval architecture come into action. Not until the 1920s did the employment of the study of aerodynamics do for the structure of sails and rigging what it had previously done for hulls.
Because nearly all sailboats had been individually custom-built, there came a need for handicapping boats previous to the one-design class boats were built. Thus, a rating rule came into being, which resulted in the International Rule, accepted in 1906 and edited in 1919. In modern times, one of the rapidly growing areas in the sailing industry is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are manufactured to the same dimensions in length, beam, sail area, and other elements (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing between these boats can be done on an even par with no handicapping at all. A perfect example is the uniform International America’s Cup Class taken on for racers in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
So long as yachting belonged mostly for the nobility and the wealthy, money was no object, and the size of boats grew, in both length and weight. The promotion and desire 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 made plain the seaworthiness of less sizeable boats. Later in the 20th century, notably 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
Post the decade 1840–50, in which steam began to take the place of sail power in market craft, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were used increasingly in personal boats. Sizeable power yachts were developed to a high element, and long-distance sailing was a fond activity of the rich. The first power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; they then made way to those powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller type of propulsion. Like 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, several yachts were still auxiliaries, but the large part were only power yachts that had gasoline or diesel engines.
From the last decade of the 19th century there was a push in the construction of bigger steam yachts. Conspicuous within these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, that had triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was manned by a crew of more than 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 was used in active service during 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, employing heavy oil for fuel, was furthered for 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 biggest auxiliary yacht built was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The construction of big power yachts declined from 1932, and the style after that was in preference of smaller, less costly boats. From World War II, lots of small naval craft were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. In the late 20th century, yachting is a widespread loved activity enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen who are actually owning and keeping their own small recreational yachts. The amount of yachts and yachtsmen has increased steadily, not only in the traditional places by the seacoasts but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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