Yachting and Yacht Clubs

As the Dutch found dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the initial yacht had been a pleasure craft used mostly by royalty and secondly by the burghers on the canals as well as the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. 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 then named Mary. Charles and his brother James, the duke of York (James II, reigned 1685–88), made additional yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and the same way back, on a £100 punt. Yachting rose as popular among the affluent and nobility, but after that period the trend did not last.

The first yacht association in the British Isles, the Water Club, was formed at about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard association, and held large naval panoply and formality. The closest thing to a race was the “chase,” in which the “fleet” pursued an imagined enemy. The club persisted, mostly as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, by merging with other societies, it was known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).

Yacht racing began in some stipulated method 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 monarchy in 1820, it was then named the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded after a racing dispute, 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 sponsorship made the Solent - the strait between the mainland and the Isle of Wight - the continued site of British yachting. The organisation at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, also at the ascension of George IV. Each 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 superlative. Eventually Royal Yachting Club boats increased in size to over 350 tons.

In North America, yachting was first accomplished with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and continued when the English took dominance. Sailing was largely for leisure and reached its epitome in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which cruised on the Mediterranean Sea and created 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 formed in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens began the New York Yacht Club while aboard his schooner Gimcrack.

Kinds of sailboats
The first sailing yachts were within the style of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century until the latter half of the 19th century. The design of bigger yachts was originally greatly impacted by the success of America, which was drawn 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 success at Cowes in 1851. The first yachts were not designed and built in a contemporary sense, with just a model being used. Not until the second half of the 19th century did what was known as naval architecture come into action. Not until the 1920s did the employment of the study of aerodynamics do for the craft of sails and rigging what science had previously done for hulls.

Because nearly all sailboats had been individually built, there arose a requirement for handicapping boats as this was before the one-design class boats were designed. Therefore, a rating rule was decreed, which ended up in the International Rule, taken on in 1906 and revised in 1919. In modern times, one of the most rapidly blossoming areas in the field of sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are manufactured to the same dimensions in length, beam, sail area, and other elements (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing those boats can be held on an even par with no handicapping necessary. A perfect example is the standard International America’s Cup Class taken on for participants in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

For the time that yachting was done mostly for the nobility and the wealthy, expense was no object, and the size of boats increased, in both length and weight. The promotion and desire of smaller boats came in the latter 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 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 less sizeable boats. Thereafter in the 20th century, notably after World War II, smaller racing and recreational boats became more popular, down to the dinghy, a favoured training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, craft of less than 3 m were setting sail single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.

Kinds of power yachts
After the decade 1840–50, during which steam started to replace sail power in public vessels, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were employed more and more in personal vessels. Large power yachts were developed to a high degree, and long-distance cruising was a fond pastime of the affluent. The first power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; these then gave way to those powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. As well as naval and merchant vessels, auxiliaries with both sail and power were the yacht archetype for several years. By the latter half of the 20th century, a lot of yachts were still auxiliaries, but the larger part were exclusively power yachts with gasoline or diesel engines.

In the last decade of the 19th century there was a boom in the manufacture of more sizeable steam yachts. Conspicuous within 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 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 saw active service for World War II.

As bigger and more reliable internal-combustion engines were developed, many bigger boats started using them for power. The creation of the diesel engine, with heavy oil for fuel, was furthered for World War I. During the decade after that, large power-yacht manufacture blossomed, reaching a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. In that point the biggest auxiliary yacht constructed was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The manufacture of big power boats declined after 1932, and the trend from then was in preference of smaller, less pricey craft. From World War II, lots of small naval vessels were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting is a widespread beloved activity enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen personally owning and keeping their own small recreational boats. The number of yachts and yachtsmen is increasing steadily, not only in the traditional locations along the sea but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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