As the Dutch rose to preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the initial yacht became a leisure craft used initially by royalty and secondly by the burghers in the canals as well as the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing was incidental, arising as private challenges. English yachting originated with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his reaffirmation to the English monarchy 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, sovereign 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 punt. Yachting rose as fashionable for the affluent and royalty, but after that time the trend did not last.
The first yacht association in the British Isles, the Water Club, was formed in 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 was the “chase,” for which the “fleet” pursued a fictional enemy. The club went on, largely as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, by conglomerating with other groups, it became the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was first seen in some organized manner 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 the throne in 1820, it came to be called the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded with a racing fight, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht society had been started 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 perpetual site of British yacht racing. The society at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, again at the accession of George IV. Every member was required to possess boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing races for high bets were held, and the social life was superlative. It came to be that the 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 took control. Sailing was largely 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 the area from the late 19th century. The first enduring American yacht society, the Detroit Boat Club, was started 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 through to the later half of the 19th century. The design of sizeable yachts was first largely put upon by the success of America, which was created by George Steers for a association started by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) was named after its victory at Cowes in 1851. The first yachts were not designed and crafted in the modern sense, with merely a model being used. Not until the latter half of the 19th century did what was labeled naval architecture come into action. Not until the 1920s did the application of the science of aerodynamics do for the craft of sails and rigging what science had already done for hulls.
Because almost all sailboats had been individually custom-built, there arose a requirement for handicapping boats as this was before the one-design class boats were built. Thus, a rating rule came into being, which is found in the International Rule, taken on in 1906 and amended 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 single specifications in length, beam, sail area, and other aspects (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing between such boats can be held on an even par with no handicapping required. A prime example is the uniform International America’s Cup Class adopted for racers in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
As long as yachting was done mostly for the aristocracy and the rich, expense was no problem, and the size of boats increased, in both length and weight. The rise and popularity of smaller yachts occurred 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 voyage around the world (1895–98) captained single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray demonstrated the hardiness of smaller craft. Thereafter in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and pleasure boats became more common, down to the dinghy, a popular training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, craft 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 replace sail power in commercial boats, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly favoured in personal craft. Bigger power yachts were developed to a high element, and long-distance sailing became a fond pastime of the rich. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then gave way to yachts powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. Like naval and merchant boats, auxiliaries carrying both sail and power were the yacht fashion for several years. By the second half of the 20th century, a lot of yachts were still auxiliaries, but the large part were exclusively power yachts that had gasoline or diesel engines.
In the last decade of the 19th century there was a push in the design of large steam yachts. Conspicuous within these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, that had triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was sailed by a crew of over 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 for World War II.
As more sizeable and more dependable internal-combustion engines were created, many bigger boats were using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, using heavy oil for fuel, was furthered from World War I. During the decade following that, big power-yacht creation grew, hitting a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. In that period the largest auxiliary yacht manufactured was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The building of larger power boats lessened after 1932, and the fashion thereafter was toward smaller, less expensive craft. Following World War II, many small naval craft were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. In the late 20th century, yachting had become a widespread beloved sport enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen who are actually sailing and upkeeping their own small pleasure craft. The popularity of boats and yachtsmen is increasing steadily, not only in the traditional areas on the seacoasts but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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