As the Dutch found preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the initial yacht was a pleasure craft used mostly by royalty and then by the burghers in the canals and then in the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing yachts was incidental, borne from private matches. English yachting originated with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his reaffirmation 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 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 back, on a £100 bet. Yachting became classy for the wealthy and royalty, but after that time the fashion did not last.

The first yacht group in the British Isles, the Water Club, was formed in about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard association, and held much naval panoply and formality. The closest thing to a race was the “chase,” in which the “fleet” pursued a fictional enemy. The club went on, for the large part as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, by joining with other organisations, it became known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).

Yacht racing was seen in some ordered fashion on the Thames around the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland instigated the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV ascended to sovereignty in 1820, it came to be known as the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded after a racing fight, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht group 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 continued site of British yacht racing. The club at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, again at the accession of George IV. All members were required to have boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing matches for large bets were held, and the society life was lovely. Eventually Royal Yachting Club boats were raised in size to bigger than 350 tons.

In North America, yachting was first accomplished with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and persisted when the English took power. Sailing was largely for fun and rose to its epitome in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which sailed on the Mediterranean Sea and established a benchmark of luxury and sophistication for the later yachts in the area from the late 19th century. The first continuing American yacht association, the Detroit Boat Club, was started in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens began the New York Yacht Club aboard his schooner Gimcrack.

Kinds of sailboats
The first sailing yachts followed the design 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 greatly put upon by the success of America, which was drawn by George Steers for a club headed 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 today’s sense, with merely a model for an outline. 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 study of aerodynamics do for the structure of sails and rigging what such science had earlier done for hulls.

Because nearly all sailboats had to be individually custom-built, there was a requirement for handicapping boats before the one-design class boats were built. Hence, a rating rule was written, which ended up in the International Rule, accepted in 1906 and revised in 1919. In the present day, one of the fastest blossoming areas in the sailing industry is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are manufactured to the same dimensions in length, beam, sail area, and other elements (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing between those boats can be held on an even basis with no handicapping necessary. A prime example is the generic International America’s Cup Class adopted for participants in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

So long as yachting was done primarily for the nobility and the rich, cost was no problem, and the size of boats developed, in both length and weight. The promotion and desire of smaller boats occurred in the later 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 proved the hardiness of smaller boats. Following this in the 20th century, notably after World War II, smaller racing and leisure yachts 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, in which steam started to take the place of sail power in commercial boats, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were used increasingly in pleasure boats. Bigger power yachts were developed to a high degree, and long-distance cruising turned into a fond pastime of the well off. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then gave rise to those powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller type of propulsion. As in the case of naval and merchant boats, auxiliaries carrying both sail and power were the yacht fashion for a number of years. By the second half of the 20th century, many yachts were still auxiliaries, but the majority were exclusively power yachts containing gasoline or diesel engines.

From the last decade of the 19th century there was a boom in the construction of large steam yachts. Conspicuous within these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, with triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was manned 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 in World War II.

As more sizeable and more dependable internal-combustion engines were produced, many large boats were using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, using heavy oil for fuel, was furthered during World War I. In the decade after that, bigger power-yacht building blossomed, hitting a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. From that point the biggest auxiliary yacht manufactured was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The manufacture of larger power boats lessened from 1932, and the style from then was toward smaller, less expensive boats. After World War II, a lot of small naval vessels were bought by private owners for conversion to yachts. In the late 20th century, yachting has become a internationally popular competition enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen personally manning and keeping their own small leisure yachts. The popularity of craft and yachtsmen is increasing steadily, not only in the traditional places on the seacoasts but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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