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Yachting and Yacht Clubs

As the Dutch found dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the initial yacht became a pleasure craft used first by royalty and later by the burghers in the canals as well as the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing was incidental, borne from private challenges. 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 gave him a 20-metre (66-foot) pleasure boat with a beam (maximum width) of 5.6 m (18 feet), which he called Mary. Charles and his brother James, the duke of York (James II, ruled 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 wager. Yachting became popular with the wealthy and aristocracy, but after that period the habit did not last.

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

Yacht racing began in some organized fashion on the Thames in the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland instigated the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV came to sovereignty in 1820, it was then named 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 society 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 setting of British yacht racing. The society at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, likewise at the rise of George IV. Every member was required to own boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing races for large stakes were held, and the social life was lovely. Eventually Royal Yachting Club boats grew in size to over 350 tons.

In North America, yachting was first accomplished with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and continued when the English took dominance. Sailing was largely for leisure and found its epitome in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which cruised on the Mediterranean Sea and created a benchmark of luxury and sophistication for the later yachts in the area from the late 19th century. The first persisting American yacht club, the Detroit Boat Club, was instigated in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens instigated the New York Yacht Club while on board his schooner Gimcrack.

Kinds of sailboats
The Early sailing yachts were within the design of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century until the latter half of the 19th century. The style of sizeable yachts was initially heavily put upon by the win 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.) was named after its success at Cowes in 1851. Early yachts were not designed and built in today’s sense, with only a model for an outline. Not until the latter half of the 19th century did what was called 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 study had earlier done for hulls.

Because most of all sailboats had been individually built, there came a desire for handicapping boats before the one-design class boats were built. Therefore, a rating rule was created, which resulted in the International Rule, accepted in 1906 and amended in 1919. Today, one of the rapidly blossoming areas in sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are manufactured to standard dimensions in length, beam, sail area, and other elements (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing those boats can be done on an even basis with no handicapping required. A prime example is the standard International America’s Cup Class taken on for participants in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

So long as yachting was done mostly for the royal and the rich, cost was no issue, and the size of boats developed, in both length and weight. The rise and preference of smaller boats came 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 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 hardiness of less sizeable yachts. Later in the 20th century, notably after World War II, smaller racing and recreational boats became more common, down to the dinghy, a favourite 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
After the decade 1840–50, at which point steam began to replace sail power in market vessels, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly used in personal craft. Sizeable power yachts were developed to a high degree, and long-distance cruising turned into a favoured pastime of the well off. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then gave way to yachts powered by the completely submerged screw or propeller sort of propulsion. As well as naval and merchant boats, 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 large part were only power yachts that had gasoline or diesel engines.

During the last decade of the 19th century there was a boom in the design of more sizeable steam yachts. Notably among 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 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 saw active service in World War II.

As more sizeable and more reliable internal-combustion engines were developed, many bigger boats started using them for power. The creation of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, progressed during World War I. From the decade following that, large power-yacht creation flourished, hitting a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. In that point the largest auxiliary yacht built was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The construction of large power yachts lessened after 1932, and the fashion after that was for smaller, less expensive yachts. Following World War II, a lot of small naval vessels were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting had become a widespread loved activity enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen individually manning and maintaining their own small recreational craft. The popularity of yachts and yachtsmen is increasing steadily, not only in the traditional areas on the beach but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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