As the Dutch rose to preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the early yacht was a pleasure craft used first by royalty and later by the burghers for the canals and the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Yacht racing was incidental, borne from private matches. English yachting began with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his restoration to the English royalty 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 named Mary. Charles and his brother James, the duke of York (James II, ruled 1685–88), ordered for other yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and returning, on a £100 bet. Yachting was found to be fashionable among the affluent and aristocracy, but after that time the habit did not last.
The first yacht club in the British Isles, the Water Club, was instigated at about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard organization, with much naval panoply and rigour. The closest thing to racing boats was the “chase,” in which the “fleet” pursued an imaginary enemy. The club went on, largely as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, after conglomerating with other clubs, it became the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing began in some ordered 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 came to sovereignty in 1820, it was called 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 group 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 setting of British yacht racing. The association at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, likewise at the ascension of George IV. All members were required to have boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing tests for high bets were held, and the society life was lovely. Ultimately Royal Yachting Club boats were raised in size to over 350 tons.
In North America, yachting started with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and continued when the English held control. Sailing was mostly for pleasure and found its epitome in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which traveled on the Mediterranean Sea and created a standard of luxury and sophistication for the later yachts in that area from the late 19th century. The first persisting American yacht club, the Detroit Boat Club, was started in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens began the New York Yacht Club while on board his schooner Gimcrack.
Kinds of sailboats
The first sailing yachts followed the lines of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through the later half of the 19th century. The design of sizeable yachts was initially greatly affected by the victory of America, which was drawn by George Steers for a group headed 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. Early yachts were not designed and manufactured in the modern sense, with merely a model being used. Not until the second half of the 19th century did what was labeled naval architecture come into being. Not until the 1920s did the application of the science of aerodynamics do for the structure of sails and rigging what it had already done for hulls.
Because nearly all sailboats had been individually custom-built, there came a desire for handicapping boats before the one-design class boats were designed. Therefore, a rating rule came into being, which resulted in the International Rule, accepted in 1906 and revised in 1919. Today, 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 built to single dimensions in length, beam, sail area, and other elements (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing for those boats can be held on an even basis with no handicapping required. A perfect example is the generic International America’s Cup Class taken on for yachts in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
So long as yachting belonged largely for the nobility and the wealthy, money was no issue, and the size of boats grew, in both length and weight. The promotion and preference of smaller boats came in the second 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 made plain the hardiness of small yachts. Following this in the 20th century, notably after World War II, smaller racing and pleasure yachts became commonplace, down to the dinghy, a favourite 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, during which steam was set to emulate sail power in commercial vessels, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly employed in leisure boats. Large power yachts were progressed to a high standard, and long-distance travel was a fond activity of the rich. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; these then gave rise to yachts powered by the completely submerged screw or propeller sort of propulsion. As well as naval and merchant boats, auxiliaries carrying both sail and power were the yacht standard for many 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.
From the last decade of the 19th century there was a boom in the manufacture of more sizeable steam yachts. Conspicuous among these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, containing triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was operated by a crew of at least 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 during World War II.
As more sizeable and more reliable internal-combustion engines were created, many large boats started using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, with heavy oil for fuel, was furthered from World War I. In the decade after that, bigger power-yacht building grew, hitting a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. From that time the biggest auxiliary yacht constructed was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The manufacture of larger power yachts declined from 1932, and the fashion thereafter was toward smaller, less costly yachts. After World War II, a lot of small naval craft were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. By the late 20th century, yachting has become a internationally loved competition enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen personally sailing and maintaining their own small recreational boats. The popularity of boats and owners has increased steadily, not only in the traditional locations along the beach but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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