As the Dutch found dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht was a pleasure craft used initially by royalty and secondly by the burghers in the canals and the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing was incidental, coming out of private challenges. English yachting originated 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 presented him with a 20-metre (66-foot) leisure boat with a beam (maximum width) of 5.6 m (18 feet), which he called Mary. Charles and his brother James, the duke of York (James II, reigned 1685–88), made other yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and the same way back, on a £100 wager. Yachting became popular for the wealthy and aristocracy, but after that period the trend did not last.
The first yacht club in the British Isles, the Water Club, was instigated in about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard group, and had great naval panoply and rigour. The closest thing to a race was the “chase,” when the “fleet” pursued an imagined enemy. The club persisted, mostly as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, by merging with other societies, it became known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was first seen in some stipulated method on the Thames about the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland founded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV came to the throne in 1820, it came to be known as the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded following a racing dispute, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht organisation 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 continued setting of British racing. The association at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, also at the ascension of George IV. Every member was required to have boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing matches for high bets were held, and the social life was lovely. Ultimately Royal Yachting Club boats increased 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 persisted when the English took power. Sailing was largely for leisure and found its epitome in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which cruised on the Mediterranean Sea and established a minimum of luxury and sophistication for the later yachts in that area from the late 19th century. The first continuing American yacht club, the Detroit Boat Club, was instigated in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens founded the New York Yacht Club while on board his schooner Gimcrack.
Kinds of sailboats
Early sailing yachts were within the lines of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century until the latter half of the 19th century. The style of sizeable yachts was initially greatly affected by the win of America, which was designed by George Steers for a group 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. Early yachts were not designed and crafted in today’s 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 application of the science of aerodynamics do for the craft of sails and rigging what science had already done for hulls.
Because most of all sailboats had been individually custom-built, there arose a need for handicapping boats as this was previous to the one-design class boats were built. Hence, a rating rule was created, which is found in the International Rule, adopted in 1906 and revised in 1919. In the present day, one of the rapidly growing areas in sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are manufactured to standard requirements in length, beam, sail area, and other elements (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing between those boats can be had on an even keel with no handicapping at all. A perfect example is the uniform International America’s Cup Class adopted for yachts in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
For the time that yachting was an activity primarily for the nobility and the affluent, money was no object, and the size of boats developed, in both length and weight. The ascendancy and desire of smaller craft came 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) sailed single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray made plain the seaworthiness of smaller boats. Following this in the 20th century, notably after World War II, smaller racing and recreational boats became commonplace, 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
After the decade 1840–50, during which steam began to emulate sail power in market boats, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly favoured in pleasure craft. Bigger power yachts were furthered to a high element, and long-distance sailing became a favourite pastime of the affluent. The first power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; these then gave rise to boats powered by the fully submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. Like naval and merchant vessels, auxiliaries carrying both sail and power were the yacht standard for a number of years. By the later half of the 20th century, several yachts were still auxiliaries, but the larger part were only power yachts that had gasoline or diesel engines.
From the last decade of the 19th century there was a push in the manufacture of more sizeable steam yachts. Conspicuous of 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 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 gave active service in World War II.
As larger and more reliable internal-combustion engines were created, many big boats were using them for power. The creation of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, was furthered during World War I. In the decade after, big power-yacht creation grew, climaxing in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. In that period the biggest auxiliary yacht constructed was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The manufacture of big power yachts lessened from 1932, and the style from then was toward smaller, less pricey yachts. After World War II, many small naval craft were sold to private owners for conversion to yachts. In the late 20th century, yachting has become a globally loved activity enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen individually owning and maintaining their own small pleasure craft. The number of yachts and yachtsmen increased steadily, not only in the traditional places on the beach but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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