Roger Out

As the Dutch rose to preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the initial yacht had been a pleasure craft used mostly by royalty and secondly by the burghers in the canals as well as the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing yachts 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 monarchy in 1660, the city of Amsterdam gave him a 20-metre (66-foot) leisure 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), built more 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 among the wealthy and nobility, but after that period the fashion did not last.

The first yacht group in the British Isles, the Water Club, was instigated in about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard association, with great naval panoply and formality. The closest thing to a race was the “chase,” in which the “fleet” pursued an imaginary enemy. The club persisted, largely as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, when merging with other societies, it was known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).

Yacht racing was first seen in some stipulated method on the Thames around the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland funded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV ascended to sovereignty in 1820, it was called the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded following 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 setting of British yacht racing. The club at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, again 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 stakes were held, and the club life was superlative. Ultimately Royal Yachting Club boats were raised in size to bigger 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 mostly for fun and rose to its epitome in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which sailed on the Mediterranean Sea and created a standard of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in those waters from the late 19th century. The first persisting American yacht society, the Detroit Boat Club, was instigated in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens instigated 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 craft of large yachts was first largely impacted by the win of America, which was drawn by George Steers for a group 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. Earlier yachts were not designed and crafted in a contemporary sense, with merely a model used. Not until the later half of the 19th century did what was called naval architecture come into being. Not until the 1920s did the employment of the study of aerodynamics do for the design of sails and rigging what science had previously done for hulls.

Because almost all sailboats had to be individually custom-built, there came a requirement for handicapping boats previous to the one-design class boats were built. Thus, a rating rule was decreed, which is found in the International Rule, adopted in 1906 and amended 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 built to the same requirements in length, beam, sail area, and other elements (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing for such boats can be done on an even par with no handicapping at all. A great example is the generic International America’s Cup Class taken on for racers in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

For the time that yachting belonged primarily for the aristocracy and the wealthy, cost was no object, and the size of boats increased, in both length and weight. The rise and preference of smaller yachts occurred 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) captained single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray proved the hardiness of smaller craft. Thereafter in the 20th century, particularly after World War II, smaller racing and pleasure boats became more popular, down to the dinghy, a preferred training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, craft of less than 3 m were setting sail single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.

Kinds of power yachts
After the decade 1840–50, when steam started to take the place of sail power in public craft, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly used in pleasure yachts. Bigger power yachts were developed to a high element, and long-distance travel became a fond occupation of the well off. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then gave rise to boats powered by the fully submerged screw or propeller type of propulsion. As well as naval and merchant craft, auxiliaries with both sail and power were the yacht standard for many years. By the second half of the 20th century, a lot of yachts were still auxiliaries, but the larger part were only 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. In particular among 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 at least 150. The Mayflower, purchased by the United States Navy in 1898, was the official yacht of the president of the United States until 1929 and saw active service in World War II.

As bigger and more reliable internal-combustion engines were produced, many large yachts began using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, advanced for World War I. In the decade after, large power-yacht creation blossomed, climaxing in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. From that point the best auxiliary yacht manufactured was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The building of big power boats lessened in 1932, and the style thereafter was toward smaller, less pricey craft. From World War II, lots of small naval craft were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting had become a globally popular competition enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen personally manning and maintaining their own small pleasure boats. The number of boats and owners is increasing steadily, not only in the traditional places along the seacoasts but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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