As the Dutch found dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the early yacht had been a pleasure craft used mostly by royalty and secondly by the burghers on the canals and then in the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing yachts was incidental, arising as private games. English yachting began 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 gave 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), ordered for additional yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and returning, on a £100 wager. Yachting rose as fashionable among the wealthy and nobility, but after that period the trend did not last.
The first yacht group in the British Isles, the Water Club, was started at about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard organization, and held much naval panoply and gravity. The closest thing to racing boats was the “chase,” when the “fleet” pursued an imaginary enemy. The club went on, largely as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, when merging with other organisations, it became known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was seen in some ordered fashion on the Thames around the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland funded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV came to monarchy in 1820, it came to be 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 club had been started 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 continuing location of British racing. The organisation at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, also at the rise of George IV. Each member was required to own boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing matches for great bets were held, and the society 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 began with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and continued when the English held dominance. Sailing was mostly for fun and found its apogee in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which sailed on the Mediterranean Sea and set a standard of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in those waters from the late 19th century. The first enduring American yacht society, the Detroit Boat Club, was instigated in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens instigated the New York Yacht Club aboard his schooner Gimcrack.
Kinds of sailboats
The first sailing yachts followed the style of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century until the second 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 association led 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. Earlier yachts were not designed and built in the modern sense, with merely a model for an outline. Not until the latter half of the 19th century did what was labeled naval architecture come about. Not until the 1920s did the use of the science of aerodynamics do for the design of sails and rigging what such science had previously done for hulls.
Because most of all sailboats had to be individually manufactured, there arose a desire for handicapping boats as this was before the one-design class boats were designed. Thus, a rating rule was created, which ended up in the International Rule, adopted in 1906 and edited in 1919. In modern times, one of the most rapidly growing areas in sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are created to standard requirements in length, beam, sail area, and other areas (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing for such boats can be done on an even playing field with no handicapping at all. A prime example is the standard International America’s Cup Class taken on for racers in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
For the time that yachting belonged mostly for the royal and the affluent, expense was no object, and the size of boats increased, in both length and weight. The ascendancy and preference of smaller yachts happened in the second half of the 19th century in 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) led single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray demonstrated the value of less sizeable craft. Later in the 20th century, notably after World War II, smaller racing and recreational boats became commonplace, down to the dinghy, a favoured training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, yachts of less than 3 m were sailed single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.
Kinds of power yachts
Post the decade 1840–50, during which steam started to take the place of sail power in market boats, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were used increasingly in pleasure craft. Bigger power yachts were progressed to a high element, and long-distance sailing became a fond occupation of the wealthy. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; these then gave rise to boats powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller kind 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, several yachts were still auxiliaries, but the majority were solely power yachts containing gasoline or diesel engines.
During the last decade of the 19th century there was a push in the construction of large steam yachts. In particular among these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, containing triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was manned by a crew of over 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 gave active service in World War II.
As more sizeable and more reliable internal-combustion engines were created, many large craft began using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, advanced from World War I. From the decade that followed, bigger power-yacht building flourished, climaxing in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. In that time the largest auxiliary yacht built was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The building of larger power yachts lessened in 1932, and the trend from then was in preference of smaller, less costly craft. From World War II, many small naval boats were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting has become a internationally popular activity enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen who are actually manning and maintaining their own small leisure yachts. The amount of yachts and sailors is increasing steadily, not only in the traditional areas on the beach but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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