As the Dutch rose to preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht became a pleasure craft used initially by royalty and secondly by the burghers for the canals and then in the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing was incidental, coming out of private matches. English yachting originated 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 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 punt. Yachting rose as popular for the rich and nobility, but after that time the trend did not last.
The first yacht club in the British Isles, the Water Club, was started around about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard group, and had much naval panoply and rigour. The closest thing to racing was the “chase,” when the “fleet” pursued an imagined enemy. The club endured, for the large part as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, after joining with other clubs, it was known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was seen in some ordered method on the Thames about the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland funded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV came to sovereignty in 1820, it was then named 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 group 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 continuing location of British yachting. The association at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, likewise at the ascension of George IV. Every member was required to have boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing matches for great stakes were held, and the social life was wonderful. It came to be that the Royal Yachting Club boats increased 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 took dominance. Sailing was for the most part for leisure and found its apogee in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which cruised on the Mediterranean Sea and established a minimum of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in the area from the late 19th century. The first enduring American yacht organisation, the Detroit Boat Club, was started in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens began the New York Yacht Club while aboard his schooner Gimcrack.
Kinds of sailboats
The first sailing yachts took the lines of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through the latter half of the 19th century. The style of sizeable yachts was first greatly put upon by the success of America, which was designed by George Steers for a group led by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) found its namesake after its success at Cowes in 1851. Earlier yachts were not designed and built in a contemporary 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 application of the research of aerodynamics do for the design of sails and rigging what such study had already done for hulls.
Because nearly all sailboats were individually manufactured, there came a desire for handicapping boats before the one-design class boats were built. Therefore, a rating rule was decreed, which resulted in the International Rule, accepted in 1906 and amended in 1919. Today, one of the fastest growing areas in sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are created to the same requirements in length, beam, sail area, and other areas (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing between such boats can be had on an even keel with no handicapping required. A perfect example is the standard International America’s Cup Class taken on for yachts in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
So long as yachting was an activity largely for the nobility and the rich, expense was no issue, and the size of boats developed, in both length and weight. The rise and desire of smaller craft happened 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 journey around the world (1895–98) led single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray demonstrated the hardiness of small yachts. Later in the 20th century, notably after World War II, smaller racing and leisure yachts became more common, down to the dinghy, a preferred training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, craft of less than 3 m were traveled in single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.
Kinds of power yachts
Following the decade 1840–50, in which steam began to take the place of sail power in commercial craft, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly used in pleasure vessels. Bigger power yachts were developed to a high element, and long-distance cruising was a fond occupation of the affluent. The earliest power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; these then made way to yachts powered by the completely submerged screw or propeller sort of propulsion. Like naval and merchant vessels, auxiliaries possessing both sail and power were the yacht fashion for several years. By the later half of the 20th century, many yachts were still auxiliaries, but the larger part were exclusively power yachts that had gasoline or diesel engines.
During the last decade of the 19th century there was a boom in the design of large steam yachts. Conspicuous of these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, that had triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was manned 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 saw active service for World War II.
As larger and better quality internal-combustion engines were developed, many big craft began using them for power. The creation of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, was furthered for World War I. From the decade that followed, bigger power-yacht creation grew, climaxing in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. During that period the largest auxiliary yacht manufactured was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The building of big power yachts declined in 1932, and the fashion after that was toward smaller, less expensive craft. After World War II, many small naval craft were bought by private owners for conversion to yachts. In the late 20th century, yachting has become a globally loved sport enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen who are actually manning and keeping their own small leisure craft. The number of boats and sailors has increased steadily, not only in the traditional locations on the seacoasts but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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