As the Dutch found preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the early yacht became a leisure craft used mostly by royalty and then by the burghers for the canals and the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing was incidental, borne from private challenges. English yachting began with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his restoration to the English monarchy in 1660, the city of Amsterdam presented him with 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, ruled 1685–88), ordered for additional yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and back, on a £100 punt. Yachting became popular among the rich and royalty, but after that time the habit did not last.
The first yacht club in the British Isles, the Water Club, was instigated in about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard organization, with great naval panoply and gravity. The closest thing to racing was the “chase,” in which the “fleet” pursued an imagined enemy. The club persisted, mostly as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, when joining with other clubs, it became known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was seen in some organized fashion on the Thames about the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland funded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV came to monarchy in 1820, it came to be named the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded following a racing argument, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht society had been started 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 perpetual location of British yachting. The society at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, also at the accession of George IV. All members were required to have boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing matches for high stakes were held, and the social life was superlative. 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 continued when the English gained control. Sailing was for the most part for leisure and reached its epitome in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which traveled on the Mediterranean Sea and created 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 instigated in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens instigated the New York Yacht Club while aboard his schooner Gimcrack.
Kinds of sailboats
The first sailing yachts took the style of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through the later half of the 19th century. The craft of large yachts was initially heavily affected by the victory of America, which was drawn by George Steers for a association headed by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) found its namesake after its victory at Cowes in 1851. Early yachts were not designed and built in the modern sense, with only a model used. Not until the second half of the 19th century did what was labeled naval architecture come into being. Not until the 1920s did the employment of the study of aerodynamics do for the craft of sails and rigging what such science had earlier done for hulls.
Because most of all sailboats were individually manufactured, there came a need for handicapping boats as this was previous to the one-design class boats were built. Hence, a rating rule came into being, which resulted in the International Rule, accepted in 1906 and edited in 1919. In the present day, one of the fastest growing areas in the sailing industry is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are built to standard dimensions in length, beam, sail area, and other aspects (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing between such boats can be had on an even playing field with no handicapping required. A prime example is the generic International America’s Cup Class adopted for participants in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
For the time that yachting was done mostly for the aristocracy and the affluent, expense was no problem, and the size of boats grew, in both length and weight. The rise and popularity of smaller boats occurred in the later 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 voyage around the world (1895–98) led single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray made plain the hardiness of small craft. Thereafter in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and pleasure craft became commonplace, down to the dinghy, a preferred training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, boats of less than 3 m were traveled in single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.
Kinds of power yachts
Following the decade 1840–50, in which steam began to take the place of sail power in market vessels, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were employed increasingly in leisure yachts. Sizeable power yachts were progressed to a high standard, and long-distance sailing was a favoured activity of the affluent. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; they then gave rise to boats powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. As well as naval and merchant vessels, auxiliaries carrying both sail and power were the yacht archetype for a number of years. By the second half of the 20th century, many yachts were still auxiliaries, but the majority were only power yachts that had gasoline or diesel engines.
During the last decade of the 19th century there was a boom in the design of bigger 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 manned 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 saw active service for World War II.
As larger and more reliable internal-combustion engines were created, many large yachts were using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, progressed for World War I. In the decade following that, bigger power-yacht building flourished, hitting a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. In that period the biggest auxiliary yacht manufactured was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The building of large power yachts fell away from 1932, and the style thereafter was toward smaller, less pricey craft. From World War II, lots of small naval craft were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. In the late 20th century, yachting is a widespread popular competition enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen individually owning and maintaining their own small pleasure craft. The popularity of craft and sailors increased steadily, not only in the traditional places by the seacoasts but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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