Yachting and Yacht Clubs
As the Dutch found dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the initial yacht had been a leisure craft used mostly by royalty and later by the burghers in the canals and the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing yachts was incidental, borne from private matches. English yachting started with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his reaffirmation to the English royalty in 1660, the city of Amsterdam presented him with 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), built more yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and back, on a £100 bet. Yachting became classy for the affluent and royalty, but after that point the trend did not last.
The first yacht group in the British Isles, the Water Club, was instigated at about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard organization, with large naval panoply and rigour. The closest thing to racing was the “chase,” when the “fleet” pursued an imaginary enemy. The club went on, mostly as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, by conglomerating with other societies, it became the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing began in some ordered fashion on the Thames about the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland instigated the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV rose to monarchy in 1820, it came to be 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 group 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 setting of British yachting. The association at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, likewise at the accession of George IV. All members were required to own boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing matches for high bets were held, and the social life was wonderful. Eventually Royal Yachting Club boats were raised 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 had control. Sailing was for the most part for pleasure and reached its high point in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which sailed on the Mediterranean Sea and created a standard of luxury and sophistication for the later yachts in that area from the late 19th century. The first continuing 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
Early sailing yachts took the design of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through to the later half of the 19th century. The design of large yachts was initially largely put upon by the success 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.) found its namesake after its win at Cowes in 1851. The first yachts were not designed and crafted in the modern sense, with merely a model used. Not until the latter half of the 19th century did what was called 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 science had previously done for hulls.
Because most of all sailboats had been individually manufactured, there was a need for handicapping boats previous to the one-design class boats were built. Hence, a rating rule was created, which resulted in the International Rule, adopted in 1906 and edited in 1919. In the present day, one of the 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 single dimensions in length, beam, sail area, and other areas (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 great 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 primarily for the nobility and the wealthy, cost was no issue, and the size of boats grew, in both length and weight. The rise and preference of smaller boats came in the second 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 journey around the world (1895–98) led single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray demonstrated the value of less sizeable boats. Thereafter in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and leisure craft became more common, down to the dinghy, a favourite 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
After the decade 1840–50, at which point steam started to take the place of sail power in commercial craft, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were employed increasingly in leisure yachts. Sizeable power yachts were developed to a high standard, and long-distance travel turned into a fond occupation of the wealthy. The first power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; these then gave rise to boats powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller sort of propulsion. As well as naval and merchant vessels, auxiliaries with both sail and power were the yacht standard for many years. By the latter half of the 20th century, many yachts were still auxiliaries, but the majority were exclusively power yachts with gasoline or diesel engines.
From the last decade of the 19th century there was a boom in the manufacture of large steam yachts. Conspicuous of these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, with 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 was used in active service for World War II.
As more sizeable and better quality internal-combustion engines were developed, many large boats began using them for power. The establishment of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, was furthered from World War I. From the decade after, large power-yacht manufacture blossomed, hitting a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. During that point the largest auxiliary yacht built was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The building of large power boats lessened after 1932, and the style thereafter was for smaller, less expensive boats. From World War II, lots of small naval boats were bought by private owners for conversion to yachts. In the late 20th century, yachting had become a widespread beloved competition enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen personally owning and upkeeping their own small leisure boats. The popularity of yachts and yachtsmen increased steadily, not only in the traditional areas on the beach but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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