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As the Dutch found dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht was a leisure craft used mostly by royalty and later by the burghers in the canals as well as 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 presented him with a 20-metre (66-foot) leisure 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, reigned 1685–88), made other yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and the same way back, on a £100 bet. Yachting was found to be popular for the wealthy and nobility, but after that point the trend did not last.

The first yacht group in the British Isles, the Water Club, was formed in about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard group, and had great naval panoply and gravity. The closest thing to a race was the “chase,” when the “fleet” pursued an imaginary enemy. The club endured, mostly as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, when merging with other organisations, it became known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).

Yacht racing was seen in some ordered method on the Thames in the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland founded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV rose to the throne 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 argument, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht group had been initiated 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 setting of British yachting. The organisation at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, also at the accession of George IV. Every member was required to have boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing races for great bets were held, and the society life was superlative. Ultimately Royal Yachting Club boats grew in size to bigger than 350 tons.

In North America, yachting started with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and persisted when the English held power. Sailing was for the most part for pleasure and reached its epitome in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which traveled on the Mediterranean Sea and established a minimum of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in the area from the late 19th century. The first persisting American yacht organisation, the Detroit Boat Club, was formed in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens instigated the New York Yacht Club aboard his schooner Gimcrack.

Kinds of sailboats
The first sailing yachts were within the style of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through the latter half of the 19th century. The craft of large yachts was first greatly affected by the win of America, which was drawn by George Steers for a association led 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. Earlier yachts were not designed and built in today’s sense, with merely a model for an outline. Not until the second half of the 19th century did what was called naval architecture come into being. Not until the 1920s did the employment of the study of aerodynamics do for the structure of sails and rigging what such science had already done for hulls.

Because almost all sailboats had been individually manufactured, there was a need for handicapping boats before the one-design class boats were made. Hence, a rating rule was written, which ended up in the International Rule, taken on in 1906 and edited in 1919. In the present day, one of the fastest growing areas in the sailing industry is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are created to single dimensions in length, beam, sail area, and other elements (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing these boats can be done on an even par with no handicapping required. A perfect example is the generic International America’s Cup Class adopted for racers in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

For the time that yachting belonged primarily for the aristocracy and the wealthy, money was no object, and the size of boats increased, in both length and weight. The rise and preference of smaller boats 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) led single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray demonstrated the seaworthiness of smaller boats. Following this in the 20th century, for the larger part 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, boats of less than 3 m were setting sail single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.

Kinds of power yachts
Following the decade 1840–50, in which steam started to replace sail power in market vessels, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly favoured in leisure boats. Sizeable power yachts were progressed to a high standard, and long-distance cruising was a fond activity of the wealthy. The earliest power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; they then gave rise to those powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. As in the case of naval and merchant yachts, auxiliaries possessing both sail and power were the yacht standard for many years. By the latter half of the 20th century, several yachts were still auxiliaries, but the majority were exclusively power yachts with gasoline or diesel engines.

From the last decade of the 19th century there was a push in the manufacture of large steam yachts. In particular within these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, with triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was operated by a crew of at least 150. The Mayflower, bought 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 bigger and better quality internal-combustion engines were created, many large craft were using them for power. The creation of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, advanced for World War I. From the decade after that, big power-yacht creation blossomed, reaching a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. From that period the best auxiliary yacht manufactured was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The building of bigger power boats lessened after 1932, and the style after that was toward smaller, less pricey boats. From World War II, many small naval boats were bought by private owners for conversion to yachts. By the late 20th century, yachting has become a widespread popular sport enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen who are actually manning and upkeeping their own small pleasure craft. The amount of yachts and sailors has increased steadily, not only in the traditional locations on the sea but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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