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As the Dutch found preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht was a pleasure craft used first by royalty and then by the burghers in the canals as well as the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing was incidental, arising as private matches. English yachting began 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 gave 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), built additional yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and returning, on a £100 wager. Yachting rose as fashionable among the rich and nobility, but after that time the trend did not last.

The first yacht group in the British Isles, the Water Club, was formed at about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard association, and held great naval panoply and gravity. The closest thing to racing boats was the “chase,” for which the “fleet” pursued an imagined enemy. The club persisted, largely as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, by joining with other societies, it was known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).

Yacht racing was first seen in some ordered method on the Thames around 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 named the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded with a racing argument, 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 patronage made the Solent - the strait between the mainland and the Isle of Wight - the continued site of British yachting. The association at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, likewise at the rise of George IV. All members were required to own boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing races for great bids were held, and the social life was splendid. It came to be that the 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 continued when the English held control. Sailing was mostly for pleasure and reached its epitome in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which traveled on the Mediterranean Sea and set a minimum 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 formed in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens founded the New York Yacht Club while on board his schooner Gimcrack.

Kinds of sailboats
The first sailing yachts followed the design of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through the second half of the 19th century. The style of bigger yachts was first heavily put upon by the win of America, which was created by George Steers for a group headed by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) had its namesake after its victory at Cowes in 1851. The first yachts were not designed and manufactured in a contemporary sense, with merely a model being used. Not until the latter half of the 19th century did what was known as naval architecture come into action. Not until the 1920s did the application of the study of aerodynamics do for the design of sails and rigging what such science had done earlier for hulls.

Because most of all sailboats had to be individually manufactured, there came a requirement for handicapping boats before the one-design class boats were made. Hence, a rating rule was written, which ended up in the International Rule, accepted in 1906 and revised in 1919. Today, one of the fastest flourishing areas in sailing 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 those boats can be had on an even playing field with no handicapping at all. A prime example is the uniform International America’s Cup Class taken on for participants in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

So long as yachting was done mostly for the royal and the affluent, expense was no issue, and the size of boats grew, in both length and weight. The ascendancy and desire of smaller boats occurred 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 demonstrated the hardiness of smaller craft. Thereafter in the 20th century, particularly after World War II, smaller racing and leisure yachts became more common, down to the dinghy, a popular training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, boats of less than 3 m were traveled in single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.

Kinds of power yachts
After the decade 1840–50, when steam started to replace sail power in public craft, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were used increasingly in personal boats. Sizeable power yachts were progressed to a high element, and long-distance travel became a fond activity of the affluent. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; these then made way to boats powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller sort of propulsion. As well as naval and merchant boats, auxiliaries possessing both sail and power were the yacht fashion for many years. By the second half of the 20th century, several yachts were still auxiliaries, but the large part were only power yachts containing gasoline or diesel engines.

In the last decade of the 19th century there was a push in the design of more sizeable steam yachts. In particular of these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, that had triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was sailed by a crew of over 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 gave active service during World War II.

As more sizeable and more dependable internal-combustion engines were created, many large boats were using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, using heavy oil for fuel, progressed in World War I. In the decade following, large power-yacht building flourished, climaxing in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. During that point the biggest auxiliary yacht built was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The building of larger power craft declined after 1932, and the fashion from then was toward smaller, less costly craft. Following World War II, a lot of small naval vessels were bought by private owners for conversion to yachts. In the late 20th century, yachting is a globally popular activity enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen who are actually owning and keeping their own small recreational yachts. The popularity of yachts and yachtsmen increased steadily, not only in the traditional places on the seacoasts but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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