As the Dutch rose to dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht had been a leisure craft used initially by royalty and then by the burghers in the canals and the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing was incidental, borne from private matches. English yachting started with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his restoration to the English monarchy in 1660, the city of Amsterdam sent him a 20-metre (66-foot) leisure 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 wager. Yachting was found to be fashionable with the wealthy and royalty, but after that time the trend did not last.
The first yacht association in the British Isles, the Water Club, was started at about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard association, with great naval panoply and rigour. The closest thing to a race was the “chase,” when the “fleet” pursued a fictional enemy. The club persisted, mostly as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, after joining with other groups, it became known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was seen in some organized fashion on the Thames about the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland instigated the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV came to monarchy in 1820, it was then known as 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 organisation had been initiated 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 site of British yacht racing. The club at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, likewise at the accession of George IV. All members were required to possess boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing races for great stakes were held, and the social life was splendid. It came to be that the Royal Yachting Club boats grew in size to bigger than 350 tons.
In North America, yachting started with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and persisted when the English had power. Sailing was largely for leisure and rose to its epitome in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which traveled on the Mediterranean Sea and created a standard 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 instigated in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens began the New York Yacht Club aboard his schooner Gimcrack.
Kinds of sailboats
Early sailing yachts followed 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 craft of bigger yachts was originally heavily affected by the victory of America, which was created by George Steers for a syndicate started 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. Early yachts were not designed and manufactured in a contemporary sense, with merely a model for an outline. Not until the later half of the 19th century did what was called naval architecture come into action. Not until the 1920s did the employment of the science of aerodynamics do for the design of sails and rigging what such study had already done for hulls.
Because nearly all sailboats were individually custom-built, there came a desire for handicapping boats as this was previous to the one-design class boats were built. Therefore, a rating rule was written, which is found in the International Rule, adopted in 1906 and edited in 1919. In modern times, one of the most rapidly blossoming areas in the sailing industry is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are created to the same dimensions in length, beam, sail area, and other aspects (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing these boats can be held on an even par with no handicapping required. A prime example is the uniform International America’s Cup Class adopted for participants in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
So long as yachting belonged mostly for the aristocracy and the affluent, cost was no problem, and the size of boats developed, in both length and weight. The promotion and popularity 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 journey around the world (1895–98) captained single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray proved the hardiness of less sizeable yachts. Later in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and recreational boats became more popular, down to the dinghy, a favoured training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, yachts of less than 3 m were setting sail single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.
Kinds of power yachts
Following the decade 1840–50, when steam began to emulate sail power in market boats, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were favoured increasingly in personal vessels. Bigger power yachts were progressed to a high element, and long-distance cruising was a favoured pastime of the rich. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; these then gave way to boats powered by the fully submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. As in the case of naval and merchant yachts, auxiliaries with both sail and power were the yacht fashion for a number of 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 push in the construction of large steam yachts. In particular 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 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 was used in active service for World War II.
As larger and more reliable internal-combustion engines were developed, many bigger yachts began using them for power. The creation of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, progressed in World War I. In the decade following, large power-yacht manufacture grew, climaxing in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. In that period the biggest auxiliary yacht constructed was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The manufacture of larger power craft lessened in 1932, and the style from then 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. By the late 20th century, yachting is a globally popular activity enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen individually sailing and upkeeping their own small pleasure craft. The number of boats and yachtsmen is increasing steadily, not only in the traditional areas by the beach but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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