As the Dutch came to preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the early yacht became a pleasure craft used first by royalty and secondly by the burghers in the canals and the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing yachts was incidental, arising as private matches. English yachting originated with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his return 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 named Mary. Charles and his brother James, the duke of York (James II, ruled 1685–88), made other yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and returning, on a £100 bet. Yachting was found to be fashionable among the affluent and aristocracy, but after that period the fashion did not last.
The first yacht group in the British Isles, the Water Club, was formed around about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard association, and held large naval panoply and gravity. The closest thing to racing boats was the “chase,” for which the “fleet” pursued a fictional enemy. The club endured, mostly as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, after conglomerating with other organisations, it became the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing began in some stipulated manner 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 monarchy in 1820, it was then known as the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded after a racing dispute, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht club had been formed 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 perpetual location of British yachting. The club at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, also at the ascension of George IV. Each member was required to possess boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing tests for large bets were held, and the society life was splendid. It came to be that the Royal Yachting Club boats were raised in size to more than 350 tons.
In North America, yachting began with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and continued when the English held dominance. Sailing was mostly for leisure and rose to its high point in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which cruised on the Mediterranean Sea and established a standard of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in those waters from the late 19th century. The first enduring American yacht group, the Detroit Boat Club, was started in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens founded the New York Yacht Club while aboard 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 later half of the 19th century. The design of bigger yachts was initially largely put upon by the win of America, which was drawn by George Steers for a association led by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) was named after its success at Cowes in 1851. The first yachts were not designed and built in today’s sense, with only a model for an outline. Not until the latter half of the 19th century did what was called naval architecture come into action. Not until the 1920s did the use of the science of aerodynamics do for the craft of sails and rigging what it had earlier done for hulls.
Because most of all sailboats had been individually built, there was a need for handicapping boats before the one-design class boats were made. Therefore, a rating rule was decreed, which ended up in the International Rule, accepted in 1906 and amended in 1919. In the present day, one of the most rapidly growing areas in the field of sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are manufactured to single dimensions in length, beam, sail area, and other elements (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing for those boats can be had on an even playing field with no handicapping at all. A great example is the standard International America’s Cup Class taken on board for participants in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
So long as yachting belonged largely for the royal and the affluent, money was no object, and the size of boats grew, in both length and weight. The rise and preference of smaller craft occurred in the later 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) sailed single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray made plain the seaworthiness of less sizeable craft. Later in the 20th century, particularly after World War II, smaller racing and recreational boats became more common, down to the dinghy, a favourite 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, when steam began to replace sail power in public vessels, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly favoured in leisure vessels. Large power yachts were furthered to a high element, and long-distance sailing turned into a fond occupation of the rich. The first power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; these then made way to yachts powered by the completely submerged screw or propeller sort of propulsion. As well as naval and merchant craft, auxiliaries carrying both sail and power were the yacht archetype for a number of years. By the latter half of the 20th century, a lot of yachts were still auxiliaries, but the majority were solely power yachts with gasoline or diesel engines.
In the last decade of the 19th century there was a boom in the construction of large steam yachts. Notably within these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, that had triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was operated 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 saw active service for World War II.
As more sizeable and more dependable internal-combustion engines were developed, many large yachts were using them for power. The creation of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, was furthered from World War I. In the decade after that, large power-yacht creation blossomed, climaxing in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. From that time the best auxiliary yacht manufactured was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The manufacture of large power boats fell away in 1932, and the style from then was for smaller, less pricey yachts. Following World War II, many small naval boats were bought by private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting has become a globally loved activity enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen individually manning and keeping their own small recreational yachts. The number of craft and yachtsmen has increased steadily, not only in the traditional areas on the seacoasts but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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