As the Dutch found preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the initial yacht had been a leisure craft used mostly by royalty and later by the burghers on the canals and then in 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 throne 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 other yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and the same way back, on a £100 bet. Yachting became fashionable among the affluent and nobility, but after that time the habit did not last.
The first yacht association in the British Isles, the Water Club, was instigated at about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard association, and had much naval panoply and rigour. The closest thing to racing boats was the “chase,” when the “fleet” pursued an imagined enemy. The club persisted, for the large part as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, after merging with other clubs, it was known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing began in some ordered manner on the Thames around the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland founded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV rose to sovereignty in 1820, it was named the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded following a racing argument, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht society had been initiated 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 club at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, likewise at the accession of George IV. All members were required to have boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing tests for high stakes were held, and the social life was wonderful. It came to be that the Royal Yachting Club boats were raised 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 gained dominance. Sailing was largely for fun and rose to its epitome in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which traveled on the Mediterranean Sea and set a benchmark of luxury and sophistication for the later yachts in those waters from the late 19th century. The first persisting American yacht organisation, the Detroit Boat Club, was instigated in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens began the New York Yacht Club while on board his schooner Gimcrack.
Kinds of sailboats
Early sailing yachts took the design of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through to the later half of the 19th century. The style of large yachts was initially largely affected by the success of America, which was drawn by George Steers for a club 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 manufactured in today’s sense, with merely a model being used. Not until the second half of the 19th century did what was labeled naval architecture come about. Not until the 1920s did the use of the research of aerodynamics do for the structure of sails and rigging what science had previously done for hulls.
Because nearly all sailboats were individually built, there came a desire for handicapping boats previous to the one-design class boats were designed. Therefore, a rating rule came into being, which ended up in the International Rule, accepted in 1906 and amended in 1919. Today, one of the rapidly growing areas in the field of sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are created to single requirements in length, beam, sail area, and other elements (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing these boats can be held on an even basis with no handicapping at all. A prime example is the standard International America’s Cup Class taken on board for participants in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
For the time that yachting belonged mostly for the aristocracy and the rich, expense was no issue, and the size of boats increased, in both length and weight. The ascendancy and preference of smaller yachts came in the second 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 trip around the world (1895–98) captained single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray made plain the seaworthiness of less sizeable craft. Thereafter in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and pleasure craft became more common, down to the dinghy, a favoured training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, yachts of less than 3 m were traveled in single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.
Kinds of power yachts
Post the decade 1840–50, at which point steam was set to replace sail power in public vessels, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were employed more and more in leisure craft. Bigger power yachts were developed to a high element, and long-distance cruising became a preferred occupation of the affluent. The earliest power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; they then made way to boats powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller type of propulsion. Like naval and merchant yachts, auxiliaries with 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 majority were only power yachts with gasoline or diesel engines.
In the last decade of the 19th century there was a boom in the construction of large steam yachts. In particular of these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, containing triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was operated 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 gave active service in World War II.
As more sizeable and more reliable internal-combustion engines were developed, many bigger yachts began using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, using heavy oil for fuel, progressed from World War I. In the decade after that, big power-yacht manufacture blossomed, reaching a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. During that point the largest auxiliary yacht built was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The building of bigger power yachts lessened after 1932, and the trend from then was for smaller, less pricey yachts. After World War II, lots of small naval vessels were bought by private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting has become a internationally popular activity enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen individually manning and keeping their own small pleasure craft. The number of boats and yachtsmen increased steadily, not only in the traditional places along the sea but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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