Yachting and Yacht Clubs

As the Dutch came to dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht had been a leisure craft used mostly by royalty and secondly by the burghers for the canals and the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing 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 return to the English throne in 1660, the city of Amsterdam sent him a 20-metre (66-foot) leisure 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), made 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 was found to be popular among the affluent and nobility, but after that time the fashion did not last.

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

Yacht racing was seen in some stipulated fashion on the Thames about 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 then named the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded after 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 patronage made the Solent - the strait between the mainland and the Isle of Wight - the perpetual site of British racing. The society at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, also at the ascension of George IV. Every member was required to have boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing tests for great bets were held, and the social life was wonderful. Eventually Royal Yachting Club boats grew in size to more than 350 tons.

In North America, yachting was first accomplished with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and went on when the English held dominance. Sailing was mostly for fun and found its high point in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which traveled on the Mediterranean Sea and set a minimum of luxury and sophistication for the later yachts in those waters from the late 19th century. The first enduring American yacht group, the Detroit Boat Club, was started in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens founded the New York Yacht Club aboard his schooner Gimcrack.

Kinds of sailboats
The Early sailing yachts were within the lines of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through the latter half of the 19th century. The style of sizeable yachts was first heavily put upon by the success 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 win at Cowes in 1851. The first yachts were not designed and built in today’s sense, with only a model used. Not until the second half of the 19th century did what was known as naval architecture come about. Not until the 1920s did the employment of the research of aerodynamics do for the design of sails and rigging what such study had previously done for hulls.

Because nearly all sailboats were individually manufactured, there arose a desire for handicapping boats previous to the one-design class boats were made. Therefore, a rating rule came into being, which resulted in the International Rule, taken on in 1906 and revised in 1919. In modern times, one of the most rapidly growing areas in the sailing industry is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are built to single specifications in length, beam, sail area, and other elements (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing these boats can be done on an even keel with no handicapping necessary. A prime example is the standard International America’s Cup Class adopted for racers in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

So long as yachting belonged largely for the royal and the affluent, cost was no object, and the size of boats developed, in both length and weight. The promotion and desire of smaller yachts occurred in the latter half of the 19th century in 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) sailed single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray made plain the hardiness of small boats. Later in the 20th century, notably after World War II, smaller racing and recreational yachts 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 sailed single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.

Kinds of power yachts
Post the decade 1840–50, during which steam began to replace sail power in public craft, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were employed increasingly in leisure boats. Large power yachts were developed to a high standard, and long-distance travel was a fond activity of the well off. The first power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then gave rise to boats powered by the fully submerged screw or propeller sort of propulsion. Like naval and merchant boats, auxiliaries with both sail and power were the yacht standard for several years. By the second half of the 20th century, a lot of yachts were still auxiliaries, but the majority were only power yachts containing gasoline or diesel engines.

In the last decade of the 19th century there was a push in the manufacture 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 operated 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 gave active service during World War II.

As bigger and more reliable internal-combustion engines were developed, many bigger craft were using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, with heavy oil for fuel, progressed in World War I. From the decade that followed, bigger power-yacht creation blossomed, hitting a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. In that period the best auxiliary yacht manufactured was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The construction of larger power craft lessened in 1932, and the style after that was for smaller, less expensive boats. From World War II, many small naval boats were sold to private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting is a globally beloved competition enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen who are actually sailing and maintaining their own small leisure boats. The number of boats and yachtsmen increased steadily, not only in the traditional places along the beach but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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