Yachting and Yacht Clubs

As the Dutch found preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the early yacht became a leisure craft used initially by royalty and later by the burghers on the canals and the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Yacht racing was incidental, borne from private games. English yachting began 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, sovereign 1685–88), made other yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and returning, on a £100 punt. Yachting was found to be fashionable with the affluent and royalty, but after that point the habit did not last.

The first yacht club in the British Isles, the Water Club, was formed around about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard association, with much naval panoply and gravity. The closest thing to a race was the “chase,” for which the “fleet” pursued a fictional enemy. The club persisted, mostly as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, after conglomerating with other organisations, 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 founded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV ascended to the throne in 1820, it was 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 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 site of British yachting. The association 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 tests for large bets were held, and the social life was superlative. It came to be that the Royal Yachting Club boats grew in size to bigger than 350 tons.

In North America, yachting began with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and went on when the English had dominance. Sailing was mostly for leisure and reached its apogee in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which sailed on the Mediterranean Sea and established a minimum of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in those waters from the late 19th century. The first enduring American yacht society, 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
The first sailing yachts followed the style of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century until the second half of the 19th century. The craft of bigger yachts was initially heavily impacted by the win of America, which was drawn by George Steers for a syndicate led 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 the modern sense, with only a model for an outline. Not until the latter 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 earlier done for hulls.

Because almost all sailboats had been individually custom-built, there was a need for handicapping boats before the one-design class boats were built. Hence, a rating rule came into being, which resulted in the International Rule, accepted in 1906 and amended in 1919. Today, one of the fastest growing areas in sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are built to standard specifications in length, beam, sail area, and other areas (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing these boats can be done on an even playing field with no handicapping at all. A perfect example is the standard International America’s Cup Class taken on for yachts in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

For the time that yachting was done largely for the royal and the rich, money was no issue, and the size of boats grew, in both length and weight. The rise and popularity of smaller craft occurred in the latter 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 trip around the world (1895–98) led single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray proved the value of smaller boats. Thereafter in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and leisure yachts became commonplace, down to the dinghy, a popular training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, craft of less than 3 m were traveled in single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.

Kinds of power yachts
Following the decade 1840–50, during which steam started to take the place of sail power in public boats, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were employed increasingly in pleasure boats. Sizeable power yachts were developed to a high degree, and long-distance travel was a favoured pastime of the affluent. The earliest power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then gave rise to boats powered by the fully submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. As in the case of naval and merchant boats, auxiliaries carrying both sail and power were the yacht fashion for many years. By the later half of the 20th century, many yachts were still auxiliaries, but the larger part were only power yachts containing gasoline or diesel engines.

In the last decade of the 19th century there was a push in the design of large steam yachts. In particular of 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 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 saw active service during World War II.

As more sizeable and more dependable internal-combustion engines were produced, many large craft began using them for power. The creation of the diesel engine, using heavy oil for fuel, progressed for World War I. In the decade after, big power-yacht creation flourished, reaching a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. From that time the best auxiliary yacht constructed was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The building of large power boats declined in 1932, and the fashion thereafter was toward smaller, less costly craft. After World War II, a lot of small naval boats were sold to private owners for conversion to yachts. By the late 20th century, yachting is a widespread beloved sport enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen personally sailing and maintaining their own small recreational yachts. The popularity of boats and yachtsmen has increased steadily, not only in the traditional locations on the sea but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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