As the Dutch found preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the early yacht was a pleasure craft used first by royalty and then by the burghers in the canals as well as the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Yacht racing was incidental, borne from private games. English yachting began with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his restoration to the English throne 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, sovereign 1685–88), built additional 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 popular for the wealthy and royalty, but after that point the fashion did not last.
The first yacht association 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 large naval panoply and formality. The closest thing to racing was the “chase,” in which the “fleet” pursued an imaginary enemy. The club went on, largely as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, by conglomerating with other societies, it became the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was first seen in some organized manner on the Thames about the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland founded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV ascended to the throne in 1820, it was named the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded after a racing argument, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht organisation 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 continuing site of British racing. The society at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, also at the rise of George IV. All members were required to possess boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing tests for high bids were held, and the social life was wonderful. It came to be that the Royal Yachting Club boats grew 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 held power. Sailing was largely for pleasure and found its apogee in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which sailed on the Mediterranean Sea and created a minimum of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in the area from the late 19th century. The first continuing American yacht club, the Detroit Boat Club, was started in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens founded the New York Yacht Club while on board his schooner Gimcrack.
Kinds of sailboats
The Early 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 bigger yachts was initially heavily affected by the success of America, which was designed by George Steers for a club led 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. The first yachts were not designed and manufactured in the modern sense, with merely a model used. Not until the later half of the 19th century did what was known as naval architecture come into being. Not until the 1920s did the use of the science of aerodynamics do for the craft of sails and rigging what such study had done earlier for hulls.
Because nearly all sailboats had been individually manufactured, there arose a requirement for handicapping boats previous to the one-design class boats were made. Thus, a rating rule was created, which ended up in the International Rule, accepted in 1906 and revised in 1919. In modern times, one of the most rapidly blossoming areas in 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 aspects (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing between those boats can be had on an even keel with no handicapping required. A great example is the uniform International America’s Cup Class taken on for racers in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
So long as yachting belonged mostly for the royal and the affluent, expense was no problem, and the size of boats developed, in both length and weight. The ascendancy and desire of smaller boats 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 voyage around the world (1895–98) sailed single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray made plain the value of smaller boats. Later 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 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
Following the decade 1840–50, when steam started to replace sail power in public vessels, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly employed in pleasure craft. Large power yachts were progressed to a high standard, and long-distance travel was a favourite activity of the affluent. The first power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then gave way to those powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller sort of propulsion. As in the case of naval and merchant vessels, auxiliaries carrying both sail and power were the yacht standard for many years. By the latter half of the 20th century, many yachts were still auxiliaries, but the majority were exclusively power yachts that had gasoline or diesel engines.
In the last decade of the 19th century there was a rise in the design of bigger 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 operated by a crew of over 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 was used in active service for World War II.
As larger and more reliable internal-combustion engines were created, many bigger yachts were using them for power. The establishment of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, was furthered from World War I. During the decade following that, bigger power-yacht manufacture grew, reaching a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. In that point the largest auxiliary yacht manufactured was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The building of big power boats declined from 1932, and the fashion after that was in preference of smaller, less pricey yachts. From World War II, a lot of small naval boats were sold to private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting had become a internationally popular sport enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen individually manning and maintaining their own small leisure yachts. The popularity of craft and yachtsmen increased steadily, not only in the traditional places on the sea but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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