As the Dutch came to dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht had been a pleasure craft used initially by royalty and secondly by the burghers on the canals as well as the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Yacht racing 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 reaffirmation to the English royalty in 1660, the city of Amsterdam presented him with a 20-metre (66-foot) leisure 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, sovereign 1685–88), built more 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 classy for the rich and royalty, but after that time the habit did not last.
The first yacht group in the British Isles, the Water Club, was formed in about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard group, and had great naval panoply and formality. The closest thing to a race was the “chase,” when the “fleet” pursued an imagined enemy. The club endured, for the large part 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 was seen in some ordered method on the Thames about the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland instigated the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV ascended to the throne in 1820, it was 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 society 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 association 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 tests for great stakes were held, and the club life was superlative. It came to be that the Royal Yachting Club boats grew in size to bigger 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 gained control. Sailing was mostly for pleasure 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 sophistication for the later yachts in the area from the late 19th century. The first continuing American yacht association, the Detroit Boat Club, was started in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens founded the New York Yacht Club while on board his schooner Gimcrack.
Kinds of sailboats
Early sailing yachts followed the design of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century until the later half of the 19th century. The style of sizeable yachts was initially greatly affected by the victory of America, which was designed by George Steers for a club started by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) had its namesake after its victory at Cowes in 1851. The first yachts were not designed and manufactured in the modern sense, with only a model for an outline. Not until the latter half of the 19th century did what was known as naval architecture come into being. Not until the 1920s did the application of the science of aerodynamics do for the design of sails and rigging what such study had already done for hulls.
Because nearly all sailboats had been individually manufactured, there was a requirement for handicapping boats before the one-design class boats were made. Hence, a rating rule was decreed, which ended up in the International Rule, accepted in 1906 and amended in 1919. In the present day, one of the fastest growing areas in sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are manufactured to standard specifications in length, beam, sail area, and other elements (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing these boats can be held on an even par with no handicapping at all. A perfect example is the generic International America’s Cup Class taken on board for participants in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
So long as yachting belonged largely for the nobility and the rich, cost was no problem, and the size of boats grew, in both length and weight. The rise and preference of smaller craft happened 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) sailed single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray demonstrated the value of smaller craft. Following this in the 20th century, particularly after World War II, smaller racing and recreational boats became more common, 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
After the decade 1840–50, at which point steam began to replace sail power in market boats, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were employed more and more in leisure craft. Bigger power yachts were furthered to a high standard, and long-distance cruising became a favourite pastime of the affluent. The first power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then made way to yachts powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller type of propulsion. As well as naval and merchant craft, auxiliaries possessing both sail and power were the yacht fashion for several years. By the latter half of the 20th century, a lot of yachts were still auxiliaries, but the large part were exclusively power yachts that had gasoline or diesel engines.
During the last decade of the 19th century there was a push in the design 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 sailed 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 was used in active service for World War II.
As bigger and better quality internal-combustion engines were developed, many large craft were using them for power. The creation of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, progressed during World War I. In the decade after, bigger power-yacht manufacture grew, climaxing in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. From that time the largest auxiliary yacht built was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The construction of large power yachts declined in 1932, and the style from then was for smaller, less pricey boats. Following World War II, a lot of small naval craft were bought by private owners for conversion to yachts. In the late 20th century, yachting is a globally beloved activity enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen personally owning and upkeeping their own small leisure craft. The number of craft and sailors is increasing steadily, not only in the traditional areas by the seacoasts but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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