As the Dutch rose to preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the initial yacht had been a pleasure craft used mostly by royalty and later by the burghers in the canals and then in the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing was incidental, arising as private matches. English yachting started with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his reaffirmation to the English throne in 1660, the city of Amsterdam sent him a 20-metre (66-foot) pleasure 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), ordered for additional yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and returning, on a £100 wager. Yachting became fashionable with the affluent and nobility, but after that period the fashion did not last.
The first yacht club in the British Isles, the Water Club, was started around about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard association, and had large naval panoply and rigour. The closest thing to racing was the “chase,” in which the “fleet” pursued an imagined enemy. The club endured, mostly as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, after conglomerating with other clubs, it was known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was first 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 came to monarchy in 1820, it was named the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded with a racing argument, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht society 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 perpetual site of British yachting. The association at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, again at the accession of George IV. All members were required to have boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing matches for great stakes were held, and the club life was splendid. Eventually Royal Yachting Club boats grew in size to over 350 tons.
In North America, yachting was first accomplished with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and persisted when the English gained control. Sailing was mostly for leisure and found its epitome in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which traveled on the Mediterranean Sea and set a benchmark 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 formed in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens founded the New York Yacht Club aboard 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 until the second half of the 19th century. The craft of large yachts was initially largely impacted by the win of America, which was drawn by George Steers for a group led by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) had its namesake after its win at Cowes in 1851. The first yachts were not designed and manufactured in today’s sense, with merely a model for an outline. Not until the latter half of the 19th century did what was called naval architecture come into action. Not until the 1920s did the application of the study of aerodynamics do for the design of sails and rigging what such study had done earlier for hulls.
Because nearly all sailboats had to be individually custom-built, there arose a requirement for handicapping boats before the one-design class boats were made. Therefore, a rating rule was created, which resulted in the International Rule, accepted in 1906 and revised in 1919. Today, 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 built to standard requirements in length, beam, sail area, and other aspects (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing these boats can be held on an even playing field with no handicapping necessary. A perfect example is the standard International America’s Cup Class taken on board for participants in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
For the time that yachting was an activity mostly for the aristocracy and the affluent, expense was no object, and the size of boats grew, in both length and weight. The ascendancy and desire of smaller boats came in the later half of the 19th century in 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) sailed single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray proved the seaworthiness of small craft. Later in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and pleasure craft became more popular, down to the dinghy, a popular 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, when steam was set to replace sail power in market craft, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were employed more and more in personal vessels. Sizeable power yachts were furthered to a high degree, and long-distance travel became a favoured activity of the rich. The earliest power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then gave way to those powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller type of propulsion. As well as naval and merchant boats, auxiliaries with both sail and power were the yacht standard for a number of years. By the latter half of the 20th century, several 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 construction 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 operated by a crew of more than 150. The Mayflower, commissioned by the United States Navy in 1898, was the official yacht of the president of the United States until 1929 and was used in active service in World War II.
As larger and more dependable internal-combustion engines were developed, many bigger craft were using them for power. The establishment of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, advanced for World War I. From the decade after that, big power-yacht building grew, hitting a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. In that period the biggest auxiliary yacht constructed was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The building of larger power boats fell away in 1932, and the fashion after that was toward smaller, less costly boats. Following World War II, many small naval vessels were bought by private owners for conversion to yachts. In the late 20th century, yachting is a internationally popular competition enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen individually sailing and upkeeping their own small pleasure yachts. The number of yachts and yachtsmen has increased steadily, not only in the traditional areas along the beach but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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