As the Dutch rose to dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the early yacht became a pleasure craft used first by royalty and then by the burghers in the canals and then in the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing was incidental, coming out of private matches. English yachting originated 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) pleasure boat with a beam (maximum width) of 5.6 m (18 feet), which he then named Mary. Charles and his brother James, the duke of York (James II, reigned 1685–88), made additional yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and back, on a £100 bet. Yachting was found to be classy among the wealthy and nobility, but after that period the trend did not last.
The first yacht club in the British Isles, the Water Club, was instigated at about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard group, with large naval panoply and gravity. The closest thing to a race was the “chase,” in which the “fleet” pursued an imagined enemy. The club went on, mostly as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, when conglomerating with other organisations, it was known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was first seen in some ordered 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 ascended to the throne in 1820, it was called the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded following a racing dispute, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht organisation 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 continued location of British racing. The organisation at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, again at the accession of George IV. Every member was required to possess boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing races for high stakes were held, and the club life was superlative. Eventually Royal Yachting Club boats grew in size to bigger than 350 tons.
In North America, yachting began with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and went on when the English gained power. Sailing was largely for fun and reached its high point in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which sailed on the Mediterranean Sea and set a minimum of luxury and sophistication for the later yachts in that area from the late 19th century. The first persisting American yacht organisation, the Detroit Boat Club, was instigated in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens founded the New York Yacht Club while on board his schooner Gimcrack.
Kinds of sailboats
Early sailing yachts followed the lines of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through to the second half of the 19th century. The craft of sizeable yachts was initially largely affected by the success of America, which was drawn by George Steers for a club headed 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. Earlier yachts were not designed and crafted in today’s sense, with merely a model being used. Not until the later half of the 19th century did what was called naval architecture come into being. Not until the 1920s did the application of the study of aerodynamics do for the structure of sails and rigging what such science had previously done for hulls.
Because nearly all sailboats had to be individually custom-built, there came a desire for handicapping boats previous to the one-design class boats were made. Therefore, a rating rule came into being, which ended up in the International Rule, taken on in 1906 and edited in 1919. Today, one of the rapidly blossoming areas in the sailing industry is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are built to single requirements in length, beam, sail area, and other aspects (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing those boats can be held on an even keel with no handicapping required. A prime example is the uniform International America’s Cup Class taken on board for yachts in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
So long as yachting was done primarily for the nobility and the wealthy, money was no problem, and the size of boats increased, in both length and weight. The ascendancy and popularity of smaller craft happened in the later 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) led single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray made plain the value of smaller craft. Following this in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and recreational yachts became more popular, down to the dinghy, a favoured 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
After the decade 1840–50, in which steam began to take the place of sail power in commercial boats, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly used in leisure yachts. Bigger power yachts were progressed to a high standard, and long-distance travel became a fond occupation of the well off. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; they then made way to those powered by the fully submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. As well as naval and merchant vessels, auxiliaries with both sail and power were the yacht fashion for several years. By the latter half of the 20th century, a lot of yachts were still auxiliaries, but the large part were solely power yachts containing gasoline or diesel engines.
During the last decade of the 19th century there was a push in the construction of large steam yachts. Notably of 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 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 during World War II.
As larger and more dependable internal-combustion engines were developed, many big yachts were using them for power. The establishment of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, was furthered from World War I. During the decade following that, big power-yacht building blossomed, hitting a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. In that period the biggest auxiliary yacht manufactured was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The manufacture of big power craft fell away after 1932, and the fashion from then was toward smaller, less costly craft. Following World War II, a lot of small naval boats were sold to private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting had become a internationally loved activity enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen personally sailing and maintaining their own small recreational craft. The popularity of yachts and sailors is increasing steadily, not only in the traditional areas along the seacoasts but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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