Yachting and Yacht Clubs
As the Dutch rose to dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the early yacht was a pleasure craft used initially by royalty and then by the burghers in the canals as well as the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Yacht racing was incidental, arising as private games. English yachting started 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 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, reigned 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 punt. Yachting was found to be popular with the wealthy and nobility, but after that period the fashion did not last.
The first yacht association in the British Isles, the Water Club, was formed in about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard organization, with great naval panoply and gravity. The closest thing to a race was the “chase,” for which the “fleet” pursued an imagined enemy. The club went on, largely 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 first seen in some organized method on the Thames about the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland instigated the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV ascended to monarchy in 1820, it was known as 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 organisation had been formed at Cowes on the Isle of Wight in 1815, and royal patronage made the Solent - the strait between the mainland and the Isle of Wight - the continuing site of British yacht racing. The association at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, again at the ascension of George IV. Every member was required to own boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing tests for great stakes were held, and the society life was wonderful. Eventually Royal Yachting Club boats increased in size to over 350 tons.
In North America, yachting started with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and went on when the English took control. Sailing was mostly for pleasure and reached its epitome in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which sailed on the Mediterranean Sea and set a standard of luxury and sophistication for the later yachts in the area from the late 19th century. The first enduring American yacht society, the Detroit Boat Club, was instigated in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens founded the New York Yacht Club while aboard his schooner Gimcrack.
Kinds of sailboats
Early sailing yachts were within the style of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through to the later half of the 19th century. The craft of sizeable yachts was first largely put upon by the victory of America, which was designed by George Steers for a group led by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) found its namesake after its success at Cowes in 1851. Early yachts were not designed and manufactured in the modern sense, with just a model used. Not until the later half of the 19th century did what was known as naval architecture come into action. Not until the 1920s did the employment of the research of aerodynamics do for the design of sails and rigging what science had previously done for hulls.
Because almost all sailboats had to be individually manufactured, there came a desire for handicapping boats as this was before the one-design class boats were designed. Thus, a rating rule came into being, which ended up in the International Rule, accepted in 1906 and amended in 1919. In the present day, one of the most rapidly growing areas in the field of sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are built to the same requirements in length, beam, sail area, and other elements (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing for these boats can be held 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 an activity largely for the nobility and the affluent, cost was no issue, and the size of boats developed, in both length and weight. The promotion and preference of smaller yachts 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 voyage around the world (1895–98) sailed single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray demonstrated the hardiness of smaller yachts. Later in the 20th century, particularly after World War II, smaller racing and recreational yachts became more common, down to the dinghy, a popular training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, boats of less than 3 m were sailed single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.
Kinds of power yachts
Post the decade 1840–50, in which steam was set to emulate sail power in market craft, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were employed more and more in leisure yachts. Large power yachts were developed to a high standard, and long-distance travel became a preferred pastime of the wealthy. The first power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; they then gave way to those powered by the fully submerged screw or propeller sort of propulsion. As in the case of naval and merchant yachts, auxiliaries carrying both sail and power were the yacht archetype for many years. By the latter half of the 20th century, a lot of 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 push in the construction of large steam yachts. In particular among these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, containing triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was manned 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 saw active service in World War II.
As more sizeable and better quality internal-combustion engines were produced, many big yachts started using them for power. The establishment of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, progressed during World War I. From the decade after, bigger power-yacht creation blossomed, climaxing in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. During that point the biggest auxiliary yacht constructed was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The building of bigger power craft fell away in 1932, and the style from then was in preference of smaller, less costly yachts. From World War II, many small naval craft were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting had become a globally loved competition enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen who are actually sailing and maintaining their own small recreational boats. The number of boats and yachtsmen is increasing steadily, not only in the traditional areas by the seacoasts but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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