Yachting and Yacht Clubs
As the Dutch found preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the initial yacht became a leisure craft used mostly by royalty and then by the burghers on the canals as well as the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing was incidental, arising as private matches. English yachting began 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 gave him a 20-metre (66-foot) pleasure boat with a beam (maximum width) of 5.6 m (18 feet), which he called Mary. Charles and his brother James, the duke of York (James II, reigned 1685–88), made additional yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and back, on a £100 punt. Yachting was found to be popular with the affluent and nobility, but after that period the fashion did not last.
The first yacht club in the British Isles, the Water Club, was started around 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,” for which the “fleet” pursued an imagined enemy. The club endured, largely as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, by merging with other clubs, it was known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was seen in some ordered fashion on the Thames about the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland founded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV ascended to sovereignty in 1820, it was then named the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded after a racing argument, 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 setting of British yachting. The society at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, likewise at the ascension of George IV. Every member was required to have boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing matches for great bets were held, and the social life was lovely. Eventually Royal Yachting Club boats grew in size to more than 350 tons.
In North America, yachting started with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and continued when the English held dominance. Sailing was largely for pleasure and reached its apogee in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which cruised on the Mediterranean Sea and established a minimum of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in those waters from the late 19th century. The first continuing American yacht organisation, the Detroit Boat Club, was started in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens instigated the New York Yacht Club while aboard 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 style of sizeable yachts was originally heavily put upon by the victory of America, which was created by George Steers for a association led by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) found its namesake after its win at Cowes in 1851. Earlier yachts were not designed and crafted in a contemporary sense, with merely a model used. Not until the later half of the 19th century did what was labeled naval architecture come into being. Not until the 1920s did the employment of the science of aerodynamics do for the structure of sails and rigging what it had previously done for hulls.
Because almost all sailboats had to be individually custom-built, there arose a requirement for handicapping boats previous to the one-design class boats were designed. Thus, a rating rule was created, which resulted in the International Rule, accepted in 1906 and revised in 1919. In the present day, one of the rapidly blossoming areas in 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 for those boats can be held on an even playing field with no handicapping required. A perfect example is the generic International America’s Cup Class taken on for racers in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
For the time that yachting belonged largely for the nobility and the rich, cost was no object, and the size of boats grew, in both length and weight. The rise and desire of smaller yachts occurred in the later 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 journey 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 small boats. Thereafter in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and recreational craft became more popular, 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, at which point steam began to take the place of sail power in public craft, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly favoured in pleasure vessels. Bigger power yachts were furthered to a high element, and long-distance sailing became a favourite pastime of the well off. The earliest power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then gave rise to those powered by the completely submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. As well as naval and merchant craft, auxiliaries possessing both sail and power were the yacht archetype for several years. By the second half of the 20th century, several yachts were still auxiliaries, but the larger part were exclusively power yachts that had gasoline or diesel engines.
During the last decade of the 19th century there was a boom in the manufacture of large steam yachts. Conspicuous within these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, with triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was operated 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 for World War II.
As larger and more reliable internal-combustion engines were developed, many bigger boats were using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, was furthered in World War I. During the decade that followed, bigger power-yacht manufacture grew, climaxing in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. In that period the largest auxiliary yacht constructed was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The construction of large power yachts lessened from 1932, and the fashion thereafter was for smaller, less expensive boats. From World War II, many small naval boats were bought by private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting has become a widespread loved competition enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen individually manning and upkeeping their own small leisure craft. The popularity of yachts and sailors increased steadily, not only in the traditional places by the beach but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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