Yachting and Yacht Clubs

As the Dutch found preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the initial yacht was a leisure craft used mostly by royalty and then by the burghers in the canals and then in the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Yacht racing was incidental, coming out of private challenges. English yachting originated with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his reaffirmation 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, sovereign 1685–88), ordered for other yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and back, on a £100 punt. Yachting became classy for the wealthy and nobility, but after that time the trend did not last.

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

Yacht racing was seen in some ordered fashion on the Thames around the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland instigated the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV rose to monarchy in 1820, it came to be 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 association had been formed 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 continued location of British yachting. The society at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, likewise at the ascension of George IV. Every member was required to own boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing matches for large bets were held, and the society life was wonderful. It came to be that the Royal Yachting Club boats were raised in size to bigger than 350 tons.

In North America, yachting was first accomplished with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and persisted when the English had dominance. Sailing was mostly for pleasure and rose to its epitome in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which traveled on the Mediterranean Sea and established a standard of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in those waters from the late 19th century. The first enduring American yacht organisation, 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
The Early sailing yachts were within the lines of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century until the later half of the 19th century. The craft of large yachts was first greatly impacted by the win of America, which was created by George Steers for a club 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. Earlier yachts were not designed and crafted in the modern sense, with only a model used. Not until the later half of the 19th century did what was labeled naval architecture come into action. Not until the 1920s did the employment of the science of aerodynamics do for the craft of sails and rigging what such study had previously done for hulls.

Because most of all sailboats had to be individually custom-built, there was a desire for handicapping boats previous to the one-design class boats were designed. Hence, a rating rule was created, which ended up in the International Rule, adopted in 1906 and revised in 1919. In modern times, one of the rapidly growing areas in sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are manufactured to single specifications in length, beam, sail area, and other areas (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing between those boats can be had on an even par with no handicapping at all. A prime example is the generic International America’s Cup Class adopted for racers in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

For the time that yachting was done primarily for the aristocracy and the affluent, expense was no problem, and the size of boats grew, in both length and weight. The promotion and popularity of smaller yachts happened in the second 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 voyage 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 boats. Thereafter in the 20th century, notably after World War II, smaller racing and pleasure boats became more common, down to the dinghy, a popular 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
After the decade 1840–50, during which steam started to replace sail power in commercial boats, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were favoured increasingly in personal vessels. Large power yachts were developed to a high degree, and long-distance cruising was a favoured occupation of the well off. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; these then gave rise to yachts powered by the completely submerged screw or propeller sort of propulsion. Like naval and merchant craft, auxiliaries possessing both sail and power were the yacht standard for many years. By the latter 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.

During the last decade of the 19th century there was a push in the construction of large steam yachts. Conspicuous of 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 more than 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 was used in active service during World War II.

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

The construction of large power boats lessened in 1932, and the trend from then was for smaller, less expensive boats. Following 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 widespread loved activity enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen personally sailing and upkeeping their own small recreational yachts. The popularity of boats and owners increased steadily, not only in the traditional locations by the sea but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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