As the Dutch rose to preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht had been a pleasure craft used mostly by royalty and later by the burghers for the canals as well as the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Yacht racing was incidental, borne from private challenges. English yachting started with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his restoration to the English throne in 1660, the city of Amsterdam presented him with a 20-metre (66-foot) pleasure 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, reigned 1685–88), built other yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and returning, on a £100 punt. Yachting was found to be classy among the affluent and royalty, but after that point the trend did not last.
The first yacht club in the British Isles, the Water Club, was started at about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard association, with much naval panoply and gravity. The closest thing to racing boats was the “chase,” in which the “fleet” pursued an imaginary enemy. The club went on, largely as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, by merging with other clubs, it became known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was first seen in some ordered method on the Thames in the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland founded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV rose to the throne in 1820, it came to be called the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded following a racing fight, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht club had been initiated 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 setting of British yacht racing. The organisation at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, also at the accession of George IV. Each member was required to own boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing tests for high stakes were held, and the social life was wonderful. Ultimately Royal Yachting Club boats were raised in size to over 350 tons.
In North America, yachting started with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and went on when the English held power. Sailing was for the most part for pleasure and found its apogee in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which sailed on the Mediterranean Sea and established a minimum of luxury and sophistication for the later yachts in the area from the late 19th century. The first persisting American yacht association, the Detroit Boat Club, was formed in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens instigated the New York Yacht Club while on board 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 second half of the 19th century. The craft of sizeable yachts was first largely put upon by the win 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.) had its namesake after its win at Cowes in 1851. Earlier yachts were not designed and crafted in the modern sense, with only a model for an outline. Not until the later half of the 19th century did what was called naval architecture come into being. Not until the 1920s did the use of the research of aerodynamics do for the design of sails and rigging what such study had previously done for hulls.
Because almost all sailboats were individually manufactured, there came a desire for handicapping boats as this was before the one-design class boats were built. Therefore, a rating rule was written, which is found in the International Rule, accepted in 1906 and edited in 1919. In modern times, one of the rapidly growing areas in sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are created to the same requirements in length, beam, sail area, and other aspects (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing such boats can be done on an even basis with no handicapping at all. A perfect example is the generic International America’s Cup Class taken on for participants in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
So long as yachting was an activity largely for the nobility and the rich, cost was no object, and the size of boats increased, in both length and weight. The ascendancy and preference of smaller craft came in the later 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 journey 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 smaller craft. Later in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and recreational yachts became more common, down to the dinghy, a popular 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, when steam began to replace sail power in commercial craft, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were employed more and more in pleasure boats. Large power yachts were developed to a high degree, and long-distance travel was a fond occupation of the well off. The first power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then gave way to boats powered by the completely submerged screw or propeller type of propulsion. Like naval and merchant yachts, auxiliaries possessing both sail and power were the yacht archetype for many years. By the second half of the 20th century, a lot of yachts were still auxiliaries, but the majority were only power yachts with gasoline or diesel engines.
During the last decade of the 19th century there was a push in the construction of large steam yachts. Conspicuous among these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, containing triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was sailed by a crew of at least 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 gave active service in World War II.
As larger and more reliable internal-combustion engines were produced, many large craft began using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, advanced during World War I. In the decade following, big power-yacht manufacture flourished, hitting a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. During that point the largest auxiliary yacht manufactured was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The building of large power yachts lessened after 1932, and the trend thereafter was in preference of smaller, less expensive yachts. From World War II, many small naval boats were bought by private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting is a globally popular sport enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen individually owning and upkeeping their own small leisure yachts. The popularity of yachts and yachtsmen has increased steadily, not only in the traditional locations along the seacoasts but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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