As the Dutch found dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the early yacht had been a leisure craft used first by royalty and then by the burghers on the canals and the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Yacht racing was incidental, coming out of private games. English yachting started with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his reaffirmation to the English monarchy 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, sovereign 1685–88), built additional yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and the same way back, on a £100 wager. Yachting became classy with the rich and royalty, but after that time 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 organization, with great naval panoply and formality. The closest thing to racing 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 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 ordered manner on the Thames about the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland funded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV ascended to sovereignty in 1820, it came to be known as the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded after a racing fight, 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 funding made the Solent - the strait between the mainland and the Isle of Wight - the perpetual setting of British yacht racing. The organisation at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, again at the ascension of George IV. All members were required to possess boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing races for large bids were held, and the society life was superlative. Eventually Royal Yachting Club boats grew in size to more than 350 tons.
In North America, yachting started with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and went on when the English held power. Sailing was largely for pleasure and found its high point in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which sailed on the Mediterranean Sea and set a benchmark of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in that area from the late 19th century. The first persisting American yacht society, the Detroit Boat Club, was started in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens instigated the New York Yacht Club while aboard his schooner Gimcrack.
Kinds of sailboats
Early sailing yachts were within the lines of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through the latter half of the 19th century. The style of sizeable yachts was originally greatly put upon by the success 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.) was named after its win at Cowes in 1851. Early yachts were not designed and built in a contemporary sense, with just a model being used. Not until the later half of the 19th century did what was known as naval architecture come about. Not until the 1920s did the employment of the research of aerodynamics do for the structure of sails and rigging what such study had previously done for hulls.
Because almost all sailboats had been individually built, there came a desire for handicapping boats previous to the one-design class boats were designed. Therefore, a rating rule was decreed, which ended up in the International Rule, accepted in 1906 and amended in 1919. In modern times, one of the rapidly blossoming areas in sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are created to single specifications in length, beam, sail area, and other aspects (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing for these boats can be held on an even par with no handicapping at all. A prime example is the standard International America’s Cup Class taken on for participants in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
As long as yachting was an activity mostly for the nobility and the rich, money was no issue, and the size of boats grew, in both length and weight. The ascendancy and popularity of smaller craft came in the later half of the 19th century in 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) captained single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray made plain the hardiness of smaller yachts. Thereafter in the 20th century, notably after World War II, smaller racing and recreational craft became commonplace, down to the dinghy, a favoured 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
Following the decade 1840–50, during which steam started to take the place of sail power in market vessels, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly employed in pleasure yachts. Sizeable power yachts were furthered to a high degree, and long-distance travel became a preferred pastime of the rich. The first power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; these then made way to yachts powered by the completely submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. As in the case of naval and merchant vessels, auxiliaries carrying both sail and power were the yacht archetype for a number of years. By the second half of the 20th century, a lot of yachts were still auxiliaries, but the majority were exclusively power yachts containing gasoline or diesel engines.
From the last decade of the 19th century there was a rise in the design of bigger steam yachts. In particular within these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, containing triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was operated by a crew of more than 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 during World War II.
As larger and more reliable internal-combustion engines were developed, many large yachts started using them for power. The creation of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, progressed for World War I. From the decade that followed, large power-yacht building flourished, reaching a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. In that time the largest auxiliary yacht built was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The construction of large power craft declined from 1932, and the style from then was in preference of smaller, less expensive yachts. After World War II, a lot of small naval vessels were sold to private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting had become a widespread loved competition enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen personally manning and upkeeping their own small pleasure boats. The number of craft and owners has increased steadily, not only in the traditional areas along the seacoasts but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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