Yachting and Yacht Clubs

As the Dutch came to dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the early yacht was a pleasure craft used initially by royalty and later by the burghers on the canals as well as 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 restoration 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 then named 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 returning, on a £100 wager. Yachting became classy for the wealthy and royalty, but after that point the habit 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 had great naval panoply and rigour. The closest thing to a race was the “chase,” in which the “fleet” pursued an imaginary enemy. The club persisted, largely as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, by merging with other clubs, it became the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).

Yacht racing was seen in some stipulated 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 ascended to monarchy in 1820, it came to be 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 organisation had been initiated 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 continuing setting of British yacht racing. The club at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, again at the rise of George IV. Each member was required to own boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing matches for large stakes were held, and the society life was splendid. Eventually Royal Yachting Club boats grew 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 took control. Sailing was for the most part for pleasure and rose to its apogee in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which cruised on the Mediterranean Sea and created a benchmark of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in the area from the late 19th century. The first continuing American yacht association, the Detroit Boat Club, was started in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens founded the New York Yacht Club while on board his schooner Gimcrack.

Kinds of sailboats
Early sailing yachts took 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 bigger yachts was initially heavily affected by the win of America, which was created by George Steers for a syndicate headed by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) was named after its win at Cowes in 1851. The first yachts were not designed and crafted in today’s sense, with just a model used. Not until the second half of the 19th century did what was labeled naval architecture come about. Not until the 1920s did the use of the study of aerodynamics do for the design of sails and rigging what such science had already done for hulls.

Because nearly all sailboats were individually manufactured, there was a requirement 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, taken on in 1906 and revised in 1919. Today, one of the fastest growing areas in the field of 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 between those boats can be done on an even basis with no handicapping at all. A perfect example is the standard International America’s Cup Class taken on board for yachts in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

So long as yachting was done mostly for the nobility and the wealthy, cost was no issue, and the size of boats grew, in both length and weight. The rise and preference of smaller yachts came in the second 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) captained single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray made plain the value of smaller boats. Later in the 20th century, notably after World War II, smaller racing and pleasure yachts became more popular, down to the dinghy, a favourite training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, craft of less than 3 m were sailed single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.

Kinds of power yachts
Post the decade 1840–50, at which point steam started to take the place of sail power in commercial craft, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly employed in personal yachts. Sizeable power yachts were progressed to a high element, and long-distance cruising became a fond activity of the well off. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; these then made way to boats powered by the completely submerged screw or propeller type of propulsion. Like naval and merchant vessels, auxiliaries possessing both sail and power were the yacht fashion for many years. By the later half of the 20th century, several yachts were still auxiliaries, but the larger part were exclusively power yachts containing gasoline or diesel engines.

During the last decade of the 19th century there was a rise in the design of large steam yachts. Conspicuous among these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, with triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was sailed by a crew of more than 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 gave active service during World War II.

As more sizeable and more dependable internal-combustion engines were developed, many big boats began using them for power. The creation of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, was furthered from World War I. During the decade after, bigger power-yacht manufacture blossomed, reaching a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. From 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 from 1932, and the trend after that was in preference of smaller, less expensive boats. From World War II, a lot of small naval craft were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting is a globally beloved activity enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen personally manning and upkeeping their own small leisure boats. The number of craft and owners is increasing steadily, not only in the traditional places by the beach but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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