As the Dutch came to dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the initial yacht was a pleasure craft used first by royalty and then by the burghers on the canals and the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing was incidental, arising as private matches. English yachting began with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his return to the English monarchy in 1660, the city of Amsterdam gave him 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), ordered for more yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and the same way back, on a £100 punt. Yachting rose as classy among the wealthy and nobility, but after that time 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 formality. The closest thing to a race was the “chase,” when the “fleet” pursued an imaginary enemy. The club persisted, largely as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, by joining with other clubs, it became known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing began 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 named 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 formed 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 continuing location of British yacht racing. The organisation at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, likewise at the rise of George IV. Every member was required to possess boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing tests for great stakes were held, and the club life was wonderful. It came to be that the 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 took power. Sailing was largely for pleasure and reached 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 persisting American yacht group, 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
Early sailing yachts took the style of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through the later half of the 19th century. The style of sizeable yachts was initially greatly affected by the victory of America, which was designed by George Steers for a group started by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) was named after its win at Cowes in 1851. The first yachts were not designed and manufactured in a contemporary sense, with merely a model being used. Not until the later half of the 19th century did what was labeled naval architecture come into action. Not until the 1920s did the employment of the science of aerodynamics do for the structure of sails and rigging what such study had done earlier for hulls.
Because most of all sailboats had been individually built, there came a need for handicapping boats as this was before the one-design class boats were designed. Hence, a rating rule was written, which resulted in the International Rule, taken on in 1906 and amended in 1919. In the present day, one of the fastest growing areas in the field of sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are built to standard specifications in length, beam, sail area, and other elements (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing between such boats can be had on an even keel with no handicapping necessary. A perfect example is the uniform International America’s Cup Class taken on board for racers in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
For the time that yachting was an activity largely for the royal and the wealthy, expense was no object, and the size of boats grew, in both length and weight. The promotion and desire of smaller yachts occurred in the later 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 voyage 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 less sizeable boats. Thereafter in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and leisure boats became more common, down to the dinghy, a preferred training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, yachts of less than 3 m were traveled in single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.
Kinds of power yachts
Post the decade 1840–50, at which point steam began to emulate sail power in public craft, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were favoured increasingly in personal craft. Bigger power yachts were furthered to a high element, and long-distance cruising turned into a preferred pastime of the well off. The first power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; these then gave rise to boats powered by the completely submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. As in the case of naval and merchant yachts, auxiliaries carrying both sail and power were the yacht archetype for many years. By the latter half of the 20th century, several yachts were still auxiliaries, but the larger part were exclusively power yachts containing gasoline or diesel engines.
In the last decade of the 19th century there was a boom in the design of more sizeable steam yachts. In particular of these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, with triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was sailed by a crew of at least 150. The Mayflower, purchased 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 for World War II.
As larger and more reliable internal-combustion engines were produced, many bigger yachts were using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, advanced during World War I. During the decade after, bigger power-yacht building blossomed, climaxing in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. From that point the best auxiliary yacht constructed was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The construction of big power boats fell away in 1932, and the trend from then was toward smaller, less costly craft. Following World War II, a lot of small naval craft were sold to private owners for conversion to yachts. By the late 20th century, yachting had become a widespread loved competition enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen who are actually owning and upkeeping their own small leisure craft. The number of yachts and owners increased steadily, not only in the traditional areas on the seacoasts but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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