Yachting and Yacht Clubs
As the Dutch rose to dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht became a leisure craft used initially by royalty and later by the burghers for the canals as well as the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing yachts 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 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 called Mary. Charles and his brother James, the duke of York (James II, reigned 1685–88), ordered for 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 rose as popular with the affluent and nobility, but after that time the trend 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 held much naval panoply and rigour. The closest thing to racing was the “chase,” when the “fleet” pursued a fictional enemy. The club went on, for the large part as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, by joining with other societies, it became the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was seen in some organized method 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 monarchy in 1820, it came to be known as 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 group had been started 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 racing. The organisation at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, also at the accession of George IV. Each member was required to have boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing matches for high stakes were held, and the social life was lovely. It came to be that the Royal Yachting Club boats were raised in size to over 350 tons.
In North America, yachting began with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and went on when the English took dominance. Sailing was largely for fun and rose to its apogee in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which cruised on the Mediterranean Sea and set a benchmark of luxury and sophistication for the later yachts in the area from the late 19th century. The first continuing American yacht group, the Detroit Boat Club, was started in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens founded the New York Yacht Club aboard his schooner Gimcrack.
Kinds of sailboats
Early sailing yachts took the lines of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through to the later half of the 19th century. The design of bigger yachts was originally largely affected by the success of America, which was created by George Steers for a syndicate started by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) was named after its success at Cowes in 1851. Earlier yachts were not designed and manufactured in a contemporary sense, with only a model being used. Not until the second half of the 19th century did what was known as naval architecture come into being. Not until the 1920s did the use of the science of aerodynamics do for the design of sails and rigging what such science had earlier done for hulls.
Because almost all sailboats had to be individually custom-built, there arose a requirement for handicapping boats as this was before the one-design class boats were built. Thus, a rating rule was created, which is found in the International Rule, accepted in 1906 and edited in 1919. Today, one of the most rapidly flourishing areas in the field of sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are created to the same dimensions in length, beam, sail area, and other elements (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing for those boats can be held on an even keel with no handicapping necessary. A great example is the uniform International America’s Cup Class adopted for yachts in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
As long as yachting was an activity mostly for the aristocracy and the wealthy, cost was no object, and the size of boats increased, in both length and weight. The promotion and popularity of smaller yachts happened in the latter 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 seaworthiness of small yachts. Later in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and pleasure boats became more common, down to the dinghy, a favourite 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
Following the decade 1840–50, in which steam started to emulate sail power in public boats, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly employed in leisure vessels. Large power yachts were furthered to a high element, and long-distance cruising turned into a favoured occupation of the affluent. The earliest power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; these then gave rise to those powered by the completely submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. Like naval and merchant yachts, auxiliaries carrying 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 larger part were only power yachts that had gasoline or diesel engines.
During the last decade of the 19th century there was a boom in the construction of more sizeable steam yachts. In particular among 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 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 was used in active service for World War II.
As larger and more dependable internal-combustion engines were produced, many big yachts began using them for power. The creation of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, advanced for World War I. From the decade after, big power-yacht building blossomed, climaxing in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. During that time the largest auxiliary yacht constructed was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The building of larger power craft lessened in 1932, and the trend after that was in preference of smaller, less pricey yachts. From World War II, many small naval craft were sold to private owners for conversion to yachts. By the late 20th century, yachting has become a widespread popular competition enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen who are actually owning and maintaining their own small leisure yachts. The amount of yachts and sailors increased steadily, not only in the traditional locations along the sea but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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