Yachting and Yacht Clubs
As the Dutch came to preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the early yacht had been a pleasure craft used first by royalty and secondly by the burghers on the canals and 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 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 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 the same way back, on a £100 punt. Yachting rose as classy among the wealthy and nobility, but after that point the habit did not last.
The first yacht group in the British Isles, the Water Club, was started at about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard association, and had much naval panoply and formality. The closest thing to a race was the “chase,” for which the “fleet” pursued an imaginary enemy. The club persisted, mostly as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, after merging with other societies, it was known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was seen in some ordered fashion on the Thames about the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland founded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV rose to sovereignty in 1820, it was then called the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded after a racing argument, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht club had been formed 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 continuing setting of British yachting. The organisation at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, also at the rise of George IV. Each member was required to have boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing races for high bids were held, and the club life was splendid. 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 power. Sailing was largely for leisure and found its high point in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which traveled on the Mediterranean Sea and set a standard of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in the area from the late 19th century. The first persisting American yacht club, the Detroit Boat Club, was formed in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens began the New York Yacht Club aboard his schooner Gimcrack.
Kinds of sailboats
Early sailing yachts took the lines of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century until the later half of the 19th century. The craft of bigger yachts was initially greatly put upon by the win of America, which was created by George Steers for a club 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 today’s sense, with merely a model being used. Not until the second half of the 19th century did what was labeled naval architecture come into action. Not until the 1920s did the employment of the research of aerodynamics do for the craft of sails and rigging what science had done earlier for hulls.
Because most of all sailboats had been individually built, there arose a need for handicapping boats as this was previous to the one-design class boats were built. Thus, a rating rule was created, which resulted in the International Rule, adopted in 1906 and amended in 1919. Today, one of the fastest blossoming areas in the sailing industry 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 for these boats can be done on an even playing field with no handicapping at all. A perfect example is the generic International America’s Cup Class adopted for yachts in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
So long as yachting was done primarily for the aristocracy and the affluent, money was no issue, and the size of boats grew, in both length and weight. The rise and popularity of smaller craft came in the latter half of the 19th century out of 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) sailed single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray demonstrated the value of smaller yachts. Thereafter in the 20th century, particularly after World War II, smaller racing and leisure boats became commonplace, down to the dinghy, a favourite training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, yachts of less than 3 m were traveled in single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.
Kinds of power yachts
Following the decade 1840–50, during which steam was set to replace sail power in commercial vessels, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were used increasingly in pleasure boats. Bigger power yachts were furthered to a high degree, and long-distance travel turned into a fond activity of the rich. The earliest power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; these then gave rise to yachts powered by the fully submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. As in the case of naval and merchant craft, auxiliaries possessing both sail and power were the yacht fashion for several years. By the later half of the 20th century, a lot of yachts were still auxiliaries, but the larger part were only power yachts that had gasoline or diesel engines.
In the last decade of the 19th century there was a rise in the design of more sizeable steam yachts. Notably among these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, containing triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was sailed by a crew of at least 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 saw active service for World War II.
As more sizeable and more dependable internal-combustion engines were produced, many large craft were using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, advanced in World War I. From the decade after that, bigger power-yacht building blossomed, reaching a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. From that time the biggest auxiliary yacht manufactured was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The building of larger power craft declined from 1932, and the fashion after that was in preference of smaller, less expensive craft. Following World War II, many small naval vessels were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. In the late 20th century, yachting had become a globally loved activity enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen personally manning and upkeeping their own small pleasure yachts. The number of yachts and sailors has increased steadily, not only in the traditional locations by the beach but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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