As the Dutch found preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the early yacht was a pleasure craft used mostly by royalty and secondly by the burghers on the canals as well as the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Yacht racing was incidental, borne from private games. English yachting started with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his restoration to the English royalty 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, ruled 1685–88), ordered for additional yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and back, on a £100 wager. Yachting was found to be classy with the rich and royalty, but after that time the habit did not last.
The first yacht group in the British Isles, the Water Club, was instigated around about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard organization, and held much naval panoply and formality. The closest thing to racing was the “chase,” in which the “fleet” pursued an imaginary enemy. The club went on, for the large part as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, by joining with other societies, it was known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was seen in some ordered manner on the Thames around the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland funded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV ascended to the throne in 1820, it was known as 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 patronage made the Solent – the strait between the mainland and the Isle of Wight – the continued location of British yacht racing. The society at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, again at the rise of George IV. Every member was required to own boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing races for large stakes were held, and the club life was splendid. Ultimately Royal Yachting Club boats increased in size to over 350 tons.
In North America, yachting was first accomplished with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and persisted when the English gained control. Sailing was mostly for fun and rose to its epitome in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which traveled on the Mediterranean Sea and set a minimum of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in that area from the late 19th century. The first continuing American yacht organisation, the Detroit Boat Club, was formed in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens instigated the New York Yacht Club aboard his schooner Gimcrack.
Kinds of sailboats
Early sailing yachts took the lines of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through to the second half of the 19th century. The design of sizeable yachts was originally heavily affected by the success of America, which was created by George Steers for a club started by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) had its namesake after its success at Cowes in 1851. The first yachts were not designed and crafted in today’s sense, with just a model for an outline. Not until the later half of the 19th century did what was labeled naval architecture come into being. Not until the 1920s did the use of the study of aerodynamics do for the design of sails and rigging what it had previously done for hulls.
Because almost all sailboats had been individually custom-built, there was a desire for handicapping boats previous to the one-design class boats were made. Therefore, a rating rule was written, which ended up in the International Rule, adopted in 1906 and amended in 1919. In modern times, one of the rapidly flourishing areas in sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are built to standard dimensions in length, beam, sail area, and other aspects (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing for these boats can be held on an even basis with no handicapping required. A prime example is the generic International America’s Cup Class adopted for racers in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
For the time that yachting was an activity mostly for the nobility and the wealthy, expense was no problem, and the size of boats increased, in both length and weight. The rise and popularity of smaller yachts came in the second 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 demonstrated the seaworthiness of small yachts. Later in the 20th century, notably after World War II, smaller racing and pleasure 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 setting sail 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 boats, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly employed in personal boats. Sizeable power yachts were developed to a high standard, and long-distance travel was a preferred occupation of the rich. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; these then gave way to boats powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller type of propulsion. As in the case of naval and merchant vessels, auxiliaries with 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.
In the last decade of the 19th century there was a push in the manufacture of large steam yachts. Notably of these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, with triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was operated by a crew of more than 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 gave active service in World War II.
As larger and more dependable internal-combustion engines were developed, many big boats were using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, with heavy oil for fuel, advanced during World War I. From the decade following that, large power-yacht building blossomed, climaxing 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 construction of large power craft lessened from 1932, and the trend from then was for smaller, less pricey yachts. Following World War II, many small naval boats were sold to private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting is a widespread loved sport enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen who are actually owning and keeping their own small leisure craft. The popularity of boats and yachtsmen is increasing steadily, not only in the traditional locations on the sea but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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