As the Dutch came to dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the early yacht had been a leisure craft used mostly by royalty and then by the burghers for the canals and the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing was incidental, coming out of private games. English yachting started with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his reaffirmation 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 then named Mary. Charles and his brother James, the duke of York (James II, ruled 1685–88), built additional yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and returning, on a £100 wager. Yachting became classy with the wealthy and nobility, but after that point the trend did not last.
The first yacht group in the British Isles, the Water Club, was started around about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard association, and had great naval panoply and formality. The closest thing to racing boats was the “chase,” for which the “fleet” pursued a fictional enemy. The club went on, for the large part as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, after joining with other clubs, it became the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing began in some ordered method on the Thames about the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland founded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV came to the throne in 1820, it came to be known as 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 group 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 continued site of British yachting. The organisation at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, likewise at the accession of George IV. Each member was required to possess boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing matches for great bids were held, and the social life was wonderful. Eventually Royal Yachting Club boats increased in size to over 350 tons.
In North America, yachting started with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and persisted when the English gained power. Sailing was mostly for pleasure and found its apogee in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which cruised on the Mediterranean Sea and set a minimum of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in that area from the late 19th century. The first persisting American yacht organisation, the Detroit Boat Club, was formed 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 lines of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through to the second half of the 19th century. The style of bigger yachts was first largely affected by the victory of America, which was designed by George Steers for a association headed by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) found its namesake after its success at Cowes in 1851. The first yachts were not designed and built in a contemporary sense, with merely a model being used. Not until the second half of the 19th century did what was known as naval architecture come into action. Not until the 1920s did the use of the research of aerodynamics do for the structure of sails and rigging what science had earlier done for hulls.
Because most of all sailboats had been individually manufactured, there came a need for handicapping boats as this was previous to the one-design class boats were made. Therefore, a rating rule was decreed, which is found in the International Rule, adopted in 1906 and amended in 1919. In modern times, one of the fastest growing areas in the field of sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are created to standard dimensions in length, beam, sail area, and other elements (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing for these boats can be had on an even par with no handicapping necessary. A prime example is the standard International America’s Cup Class adopted for yachts in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
As long as yachting was an activity mostly for the nobility and the affluent, cost was no issue, and the size of boats grew, in both length and weight. The promotion and desire of smaller boats happened 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) sailed single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray made plain the value of small craft. Thereafter in the 20th century, particularly after World War II, smaller racing and leisure craft became more popular, 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
Following the decade 1840–50, at which point steam started to replace sail power in market craft, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were used increasingly in personal boats. Sizeable power yachts were progressed to a high standard, and long-distance sailing was a favourite activity of the well off. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; they then gave rise to boats powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller type of propulsion. As well as naval and merchant vessels, auxiliaries possessing both sail and power were the yacht fashion for a number of years. By the second half of the 20th century, many yachts were still auxiliaries, but the larger part were exclusively power yachts with gasoline or diesel engines.
From the last decade of the 19th century there was a rise in the manufacture of bigger steam yachts. In particular within 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 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 in World War II.
As bigger and better quality internal-combustion engines were produced, many large boats started using them for power. The establishment of the diesel engine, with heavy oil for fuel, advanced from World War I. From the decade that followed, bigger power-yacht creation blossomed, 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 bigger power boats declined after 1932, and the style thereafter was toward smaller, less costly yachts. Following World War II, lots of small naval craft were sold to private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting has become a globally loved activity enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen personally sailing and keeping their own small recreational craft. The number of craft and owners increased steadily, not only in the traditional locations on the seacoasts but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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