As the Dutch came to preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht became a leisure craft used initially by royalty and secondly by the burghers for the canals and the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing was incidental, coming out of private matches. English yachting started with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his return 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 named Mary. Charles and his brother James, the duke of York (James II, ruled 1685–88), built other yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and back, on a £100 bet. Yachting was found to be popular for the rich and nobility, but after that time the fashion 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 group, and held much naval panoply and gravity. The closest thing to racing boats was the “chase,” for which the “fleet” pursued a fictional enemy. The club went on, mostly as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, when conglomerating with other clubs, it became the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was first seen in some ordered manner on the Thames around the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland founded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV ascended to the throne in 1820, it was then 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 association 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 continued setting of British racing. The club 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 races for great bets were held, and the club life was splendid. 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 continued when the English had dominance. Sailing was largely for fun and found its high point in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which traveled on the Mediterranean Sea and set a benchmark of luxury and sophistication for the later yachts in that area from the late 19th century. The first continuing American yacht organisation, the Detroit Boat Club, was instigated in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens founded the New York Yacht Club aboard his schooner Gimcrack.
Kinds of sailboats
Early sailing yachts took the design of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century until the latter half of the 19th century. The craft of bigger yachts was initially greatly impacted by the win of America, which was drawn 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 built in the modern 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 application of the science of aerodynamics do for the design of sails and rigging what science had done earlier for hulls.
Because almost all sailboats had been individually manufactured, there came a need for handicapping boats previous to the one-design class boats were made. Hence, a rating rule was decreed, which is found in the International Rule, accepted in 1906 and amended in 1919. In modern times, one of the fastest blossoming areas in sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are manufactured 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 playing field with no handicapping at all. A perfect example is the uniform International America’s Cup Class adopted for participants in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
For the time that yachting was done mostly for the aristocracy and the affluent, expense was no object, and the size of boats developed, in both length and weight. The ascendancy and preference of smaller boats happened in the second 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 trip around the world (1895–98) sailed single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray proved the value of small craft. Following this in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and leisure yachts became commonplace, down to the dinghy, a favoured training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, boats of less than 3 m were sailed single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.
Kinds of power yachts
Following the decade 1840–50, when steam started to take the place of sail power in commercial craft, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were employed more and more in personal craft. Large power yachts were progressed to a high standard, and long-distance sailing turned into a fond activity of the well off. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; they then made way to those powered by the fully submerged screw or propeller sort of propulsion. As well as naval and merchant craft, auxiliaries with 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 majority were solely power yachts with gasoline or diesel engines.
During the last decade of the 19th century there was a push in the manufacture of bigger steam yachts. Notably within these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, that had triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was manned by a crew of more than 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 during World War II.
As bigger and more dependable internal-combustion engines were developed, many big craft were using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, with heavy oil for fuel, was furthered for World War I. During the decade after that, bigger power-yacht manufacture flourished, reaching a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. In that time the biggest auxiliary yacht constructed was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The construction of big power craft fell away from 1932, and the trend thereafter was toward smaller, less pricey craft. After World War II, lots of small naval craft were sold to private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting had become a globally popular competition enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen who are actually owning and maintaining their own small recreational yachts. The amount of yachts and sailors has increased steadily, not only in the traditional places by the beach but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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