As the Dutch found dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht was a leisure craft used initially by royalty and later by the burghers for the canals and the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Yacht racing was incidental, borne from private games. English yachting originated 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 gave him a 20-metre (66-foot) pleasure boat with a beam (maximum width) of 5.6 m (18 feet), which he called Mary. Charles and his brother James, the duke of York (James II, sovereign 1685–88), built other yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and back, on a £100 wager. Yachting was found to be classy for the wealthy and nobility, but after that period the fashion did not last.

The first yacht group in the British Isles, the Water Club, was instigated around about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard organization, and had great naval panoply and rigour. The closest thing to racing boats was the “chase,” when the “fleet” pursued an imagined enemy. The club persisted, for the large part as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, when joining with other clubs, it became the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).

Yacht racing was first seen in some ordered fashion on the Thames in the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland funded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV came to the throne in 1820, it came to be named the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded with a racing dispute, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht association 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 continued location of British racing. The society at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, also at the rise of George IV. All members were required to own boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing matches for great bids were held, and the social life was lovely. Ultimately Royal Yachting Club boats increased 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 went on when the English took power. Sailing was mostly for fun and rose to its high point in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which traveled on the Mediterranean Sea and established a standard of luxury and sophistication for the later yachts in those waters from the late 19th century. The first enduring American yacht organisation, the Detroit Boat Club, was formed in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens instigated the New York Yacht Club while on board his schooner Gimcrack.

Kinds of sailboats
Early sailing yachts took the style of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century until the latter half of the 19th century. The craft of bigger yachts was initially greatly affected by the success of America, which was designed by George Steers for a syndicate led by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) was named after its win at Cowes in 1851. Earlier yachts were not designed and built in the modern sense, with just a model for an outline. Not until the latter half of the 19th century did what was labeled naval architecture come into being. Not until the 1920s did the use of the science of aerodynamics do for the craft of sails and rigging what such science had already done for hulls.

Because most of all sailboats were individually custom-built, there came a need for handicapping boats as this was previous to the one-design class boats were made. Hence, a rating rule was written, which ended up in the International Rule, accepted in 1906 and edited in 1919. In the present day, one of the rapidly growing areas in the sailing industry is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are built to single specifications in length, beam, sail area, and other areas (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing for those boats can be done on an even par with no handicapping required. A perfect example is the standard International America’s Cup Class taken on board for racers in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

As long as yachting was done largely for the royal and the wealthy, expense was no issue, and the size of boats increased, in both length and weight. The promotion and preference of smaller yachts 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 trip around the world (1895–98) captained single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray proved the hardiness of small yachts. Following this in the 20th century, particularly after World War II, smaller racing and leisure craft became commonplace, down to the dinghy, a favoured training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, craft of less than 3 m were setting sail single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.

Kinds of power yachts
After the decade 1840–50, in which steam was set to emulate sail power in market boats, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were employed increasingly in leisure boats. Bigger power yachts were progressed to a high degree, and long-distance cruising turned into a fond activity of the affluent. The first 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 yachts, auxiliaries carrying both sail and power were the yacht archetype for a number of years. By the later half of the 20th century, a lot of yachts were still auxiliaries, but the larger part were solely power yachts containing gasoline or diesel engines.

From the last decade of the 19th century there was a boom in the design of large 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 more than 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 gave active service during World War II.

As bigger and more reliable internal-combustion engines were created, many big yachts began using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, using heavy oil for fuel, was furthered during World War I. In the decade that followed, large power-yacht manufacture blossomed, hitting a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. During that time the biggest auxiliary yacht manufactured was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The construction of large power boats declined after 1932, and the style thereafter was for smaller, less costly boats. Following World War II, lots of small naval boats were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting has become a globally popular sport enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen personally sailing and keeping their own small pleasure boats. The number of boats and yachtsmen increased steadily, not only in the traditional locations by the sea but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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