Yachting and Yacht Clubs

As the Dutch came to preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the initial yacht had been a pleasure craft used initially by royalty and later 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 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 gave him 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, ruled 1685–88), built other yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and back, on a £100 bet. Yachting was found to be popular among the wealthy and nobility, but after that point the fashion did not last.

The first yacht group in the British Isles, the Water Club, was formed around about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard association, with large naval panoply and gravity. The closest thing to racing was the “chase,” when the “fleet” pursued an imaginary enemy. The club persisted, largely as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, when joining with other organisations, it became known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).

Yacht racing was first seen in some stipulated manner on the Thames about 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 came to be 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 organisation had been started at Cowes on the Isle of Wight in 1815, and royal funding made the Solent - the strait between the mainland and the Isle of Wight - the perpetual location of British yacht racing. The association at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, again at the ascension of George IV. All members were required to own boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing matches for high bids were held, and the club life was lovely. Eventually Royal Yachting Club boats grew 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 gained control. Sailing was for the most part for leisure and rose to its apogee in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which traveled 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 enduring American yacht society, the Detroit Boat Club, was formed in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens founded the New York Yacht Club while aboard 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 the latter half of the 19th century. The design of sizeable yachts was first largely affected by the win of America, which was designed by George Steers for a association headed by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) had its namesake after its success at Cowes in 1851. The first yachts were not designed and manufactured in today’s sense, with just a model for an outline. Not until the latter half of the 19th century did what was labeled naval architecture come about. Not until the 1920s did the application of the science 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 manufactured, there was a need for handicapping boats as this was before 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 sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are created to standard requirements in length, beam, sail area, and other areas (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing for such boats can be held on an even par with no handicapping necessary. A prime example is the standard International America’s Cup Class taken on board for racers in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

As long as yachting was done largely for the aristocracy and the rich, money was no object, and the size of boats increased, in both length and weight. The ascendancy and popularity of smaller yachts happened 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 journey around the world (1895–98) led single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray demonstrated the seaworthiness of less sizeable craft. Later in the 20th century, particularly after World War II, smaller racing and leisure craft became more common, down to the dinghy, a preferred training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, boats of less than 3 m were setting sail single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.

Kinds of power yachts
Post the decade 1840–50, in which steam was set to take the place of sail power in public boats, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were employed increasingly in pleasure yachts. Large power yachts were progressed to a high element, and long-distance cruising was a preferred occupation of the rich. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then gave rise to boats powered by the completely submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. As well as naval and merchant craft, auxiliaries with both sail and power were the yacht standard for a number of years. By the second half of the 20th century, many yachts were still auxiliaries, but the larger part were exclusively power yachts with gasoline or diesel engines.

In the last decade of the 19th century there was a boom in the design of more sizeable steam yachts. Notably of these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, that had triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was sailed by a crew of at least 150. The Mayflower, bought 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 more sizeable and more dependable internal-combustion engines were produced, many large yachts were using them for power. The creation of the diesel engine, using heavy oil for fuel, advanced for World War I. In the decade that followed, bigger power-yacht manufacture blossomed, reaching a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. From that time the best auxiliary yacht manufactured was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The construction of big power boats declined in 1932, and the style from then was toward smaller, less expensive boats. After World War II, a lot of small naval craft were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. In the late 20th century, yachting had become a globally popular sport enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen individually owning and upkeeping their own small recreational boats. The number of boats and yachtsmen increased steadily, not only in the traditional places along the seacoasts but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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