As the Dutch came to preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht had been a pleasure craft used first by royalty and secondly by the burghers for the canals and the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing yachts was incidental, coming out of private matches. English yachting originated with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his restoration 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, ruled 1685–88), made other yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and returning, on a £100 punt. Yachting rose as fashionable among the rich and nobility, but after that time the trend did not last.
The first yacht association in the British Isles, the Water Club, was started around about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard organization, and held large naval panoply and gravity. The closest thing to racing boats was the “chase,” when the “fleet” pursued an imaginary enemy. The club went on, for the large part as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, by joining with other groups, it became known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was first seen in some organized method on the Thames in the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland founded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV came to sovereignty in 1820, it was known as the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded following a racing dispute, 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 sponsorship made the Solent – the strait between the mainland and the Isle of Wight – the perpetual site of British racing. The society at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, again at the ascension of George IV. Each member was required to have boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing tests for great bids were held, and the club life was wonderful. It came to be that the 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 persisted when the English had dominance. Sailing was for the most part for fun and reached its high point 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 association, the Detroit Boat Club, was started in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens founded the New York Yacht Club while aboard his schooner Gimcrack.
Kinds of sailboats
Early sailing yachts followed the style of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through to the later half of the 19th century. The craft of sizeable yachts was initially heavily affected by the win of America, which was created by George Steers for a syndicate led by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) found its namesake after its victory at Cowes in 1851. Earlier yachts were not designed and manufactured in today’s sense, with just a model for an outline. Not until the second half of the 19th century did what was called naval architecture come into being. Not until the 1920s did the application of the science of aerodynamics do for the craft of sails and rigging what it had earlier done for hulls.
Because almost all sailboats had been individually built, there came a requirement for handicapping boats before the one-design class boats were made. Therefore, a rating rule was created, which is found in the International Rule, taken on in 1906 and amended in 1919. Today, one of the fastest 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 requirements in length, beam, sail area, and other areas (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing between those boats can be had on an even keel with no handicapping necessary. A prime example is the uniform International America’s Cup Class taken on board for participants in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
For the time that yachting belonged mostly for the nobility and the affluent, money was no problem, and the size of boats developed, in both length and weight. The ascendancy and desire of smaller craft came in the later 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 trip around the world (1895–98) captained single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray proved the value of smaller yachts. Following this in the 20th century, particularly after World War II, smaller racing and leisure yachts 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 sailed single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.
Kinds of power yachts
Following the decade 1840–50, in which steam started to emulate sail power in commercial craft, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly favoured in leisure vessels. Sizeable power yachts were developed to a high degree, and long-distance cruising became a preferred pastime of the wealthy. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; these then made way to those powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller sort of propulsion. As well as naval and merchant yachts, auxiliaries with both sail and power were the yacht archetype for several years. By the second half of the 20th century, a lot of yachts were still auxiliaries, but the larger part were solely power yachts that had gasoline or diesel engines.
During the last decade of the 19th century there was a rise in the design of bigger steam yachts. Conspicuous 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, purchased by the United States Navy in 1898, was the official yacht of the president of the United States until 1929 and saw active service during World War II.
As bigger and more reliable internal-combustion engines were created, many large boats started using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, was furthered from World War I. During the decade after, large power-yacht creation blossomed, climaxing in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. During that period the best auxiliary yacht manufactured was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The building of big power yachts lessened in 1932, and the trend thereafter was for smaller, less expensive yachts. From World War II, lots of small naval boats were bought by private owners for conversion to yachts. In the late 20th century, yachting has become a globally loved activity enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen who are actually sailing and maintaining their own small recreational boats. The number of yachts and sailors has increased steadily, not only in the traditional locations by the beach but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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