As the Dutch came to dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the initial yacht was a pleasure craft used initially by royalty and then by the burghers for the canals and then in the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing yachts was incidental, borne from 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 sent him a 20-metre (66-foot) pleasure 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, reigned 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 fashionable with the wealthy and aristocracy, but after that point the trend did not last.
The first yacht association in the British Isles, the Water Club, was started at about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard organization, with much naval panoply and rigour. The closest thing to racing was the “chase,” for which the “fleet” pursued an imaginary enemy. The club went on, mostly as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, after merging with other clubs, it became the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was first seen in some organized fashion on the Thames around the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland instigated the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV came to sovereignty in 1820, it came to be named 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 continued location of British racing. The association at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, also at the accession of George IV. Every member was required to have boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing races for great bids were held, and the social life was superlative. Ultimately 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 persisted when the English gained dominance. Sailing was for the most part for fun and reached its high point in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which traveled on the Mediterranean Sea and created a benchmark of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in that area from the late 19th century. The first persisting American yacht club, 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
The first sailing yachts were within the lines of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century until the later half of the 19th century. The design of sizeable yachts was initially greatly impacted by the success of America, which was designed by George Steers for a club headed 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 just a model used. Not until the later half of the 19th century did what was known as naval architecture come about. Not until the 1920s did the employment of the research of aerodynamics do for the structure of sails and rigging what such science had already done for hulls.
Because nearly all sailboats were individually built, there arose a desire for handicapping boats before the one-design class boats were designed. Therefore, a rating rule was decreed, which is found in the International Rule, taken on in 1906 and revised in 1919. In modern times, one of the fastest flourishing areas in the sailing industry is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are built to single dimensions in length, beam, sail area, and other aspects (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing these boats can be done on an even basis with no handicapping at all. A great example is the standard International America’s Cup Class taken on for participants in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
So long as yachting belonged primarily for the nobility and the affluent, money was no problem, and the size of boats developed, in both length and weight. The promotion and preference of smaller yachts came in the latter 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) captained single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray proved the value of less sizeable yachts. Thereafter in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and pleasure boats became commonplace, down to the dinghy, a favourite 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
Following the decade 1840–50, at which point steam started to take the place of sail power in market craft, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were employed increasingly in leisure craft. Bigger power yachts were developed to a high element, and long-distance sailing turned into a favoured occupation of the rich. The first power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; they then made way to boats powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller type of propulsion. As well as naval and merchant craft, auxiliaries with both sail and power were the yacht standard for several years. By the latter half of the 20th century, a lot of yachts were still auxiliaries, but the larger part were exclusively power yachts with gasoline or diesel engines.
In the last decade of the 19th century there was a boom in the design of bigger steam yachts. In particular of 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, commissioned 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 during World War II.
As more sizeable and more dependable internal-combustion engines were created, many large boats began using them for power. The establishment of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, advanced in World War I. In the decade after that, large power-yacht building blossomed, hitting a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. During that period the best auxiliary yacht manufactured was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The manufacture of large power yachts fell away in 1932, and the style from then was toward smaller, less expensive craft. Following World War II, lots of small naval vessels were sold to private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting is a widespread loved activity enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen who are actually sailing and maintaining their own small leisure yachts. The number of craft and yachtsmen has increased steadily, not only in the traditional locations on the sea but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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