Yachting and Yacht Clubs

As the Dutch found dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht had been a pleasure craft used initially by royalty and then by the burghers on the canals as well as the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Yacht racing was incidental, arising as private games. English yachting started with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his reaffirmation to the English royalty 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 named Mary. Charles and his brother James, the duke of York (James II, reigned 1685–88), made other yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and back, on a £100 punt. Yachting was found to be popular with the wealthy and nobility, but after that point the trend did not last.

The first yacht club in the British Isles, the Water Club, was formed in about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard group, and held large naval panoply and rigour. The closest thing to racing was the “chase,” for which the “fleet” pursued a fictional enemy. The club endured, mostly as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, after conglomerating with other societies, it was known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).

Yacht racing began in some ordered manner on the Thames in the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland funded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV rose to sovereignty in 1820, it was then known as 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 formed 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 continuing site of British yacht racing. The society at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, also at the ascension of George IV. All members were required to possess boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing races for high stakes were held, and the social life was splendid. It came to be that the Royal Yachting Club boats increased 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 for the most part for fun and found its epitome in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which traveled on the Mediterranean Sea and set a standard of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in that area from the late 19th century. The first enduring American yacht organisation, the Detroit Boat Club, was started in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens began the New York Yacht Club while on board his schooner Gimcrack.

Kinds of sailboats
The Early sailing yachts took the style of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through to the later half of the 19th century. The craft of large yachts was originally greatly affected by the success of America, which was designed 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 victory at Cowes in 1851. Early yachts were not designed and crafted in today’s sense, with just a model used. Not until the latter half of the 19th century did what was known as naval architecture come into being. Not until the 1920s did the use of the study of aerodynamics do for the craft of sails and rigging what such study had done earlier for hulls.

Because most of all sailboats were individually custom-built, there was a need for handicapping boats as this was previous to the one-design class boats were made. Hence, a rating rule was written, which ended up in the International Rule, taken on in 1906 and revised in 1919. In modern times, one of the rapidly flourishing areas in the sailing industry is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are created to standard specifications in length, beam, sail area, and other areas (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing between such boats can be had on an even par with no handicapping required. A great example is the generic International America’s Cup Class adopted for yachts in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

So long as yachting was done largely for the nobility and the rich, expense was no issue, and the size of boats grew, in both length and weight. The rise and preference of smaller yachts happened 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 voyage around the world (1895–98) captained single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray demonstrated the value of less sizeable craft. Thereafter in the 20th century, notably after World War II, smaller racing and pleasure craft became more common, down to the dinghy, a preferred 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, in which steam was set to replace sail power in commercial boats, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly favoured in pleasure yachts. Large power yachts were progressed to a high standard, and long-distance sailing became a fond activity of the wealthy. The earliest power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then made way to those powered by the completely submerged screw or propeller sort of propulsion. Like naval and merchant yachts, auxiliaries with both sail and power were the yacht fashion for many years. By the latter half of the 20th century, several yachts were still auxiliaries, but the large part were solely power yachts with gasoline or diesel engines.

In the last decade of the 19th century there was a push in the construction of more sizeable steam yachts. In particular 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, 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 more sizeable and more reliable internal-combustion engines were created, many large craft started using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, with heavy oil for fuel, progressed for World War I. During the decade following that, big power-yacht manufacture blossomed, climaxing in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. From that period the best auxiliary yacht built was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The manufacture of bigger power craft declined in 1932, and the fashion after that was toward smaller, less expensive boats. Following World War II, a lot of small naval craft were bought by private owners for conversion to yachts. By the late 20th century, yachting has become a globally popular competition enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen personally manning and maintaining their own small recreational craft. The number of boats and sailors is increasing steadily, not only in the traditional areas by the seacoasts but also on inland waterways and lakes.

Looking for boat transport Brisbane ? Talk to Elite Yacht Services. We do great work at competitive prices.