Yachting and Yacht Clubs
As the Dutch rose to dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the early yacht was a leisure craft used mostly by royalty and then by the burghers for the canals and the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Yacht racing was incidental, coming out of private matches. English yachting began with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his reaffirmation to the English royalty 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, ruled 1685–88), ordered for more yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and back, on a £100 wager. Yachting rose as fashionable with the affluent and royalty, but after that period the trend did not last.
The first yacht association in the British Isles, the Water Club, was instigated in about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard group, and had large naval panoply and rigour. The closest thing to a race was the “chase,” for which the “fleet” pursued a fictional enemy. The club persisted, largely as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, when conglomerating with other groups, it became the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was first seen in some ordered fashion on the Thames around the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland funded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV rose to the throne in 1820, it was 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 association had been started at Cowes on the Isle of Wight in 1815, and royal sponsorship made the Solent - the strait between the mainland and the Isle of Wight - the perpetual location of British racing. The association at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, likewise at the ascension of George IV. Each member was required to own boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing tests for high bets were held, and the club life was splendid. Eventually Royal Yachting Club boats increased in size to bigger than 350 tons.
In North America, yachting started with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and continued when the English gained dominance. Sailing was for the most part for pleasure and rose to its epitome in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which cruised on the Mediterranean Sea and set a minimum of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in those waters from the late 19th century. The first continuing American yacht club, the Detroit Boat Club, was started 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 took the style of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through to the later half of the 19th century. The style of large yachts was initially largely affected by the win of America, which was created by George Steers for a association led by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) found its namesake after its victory at Cowes in 1851. Earlier yachts were not designed and manufactured in a contemporary sense, with just a model for an outline. Not until the second half of the 19th century did what was called naval architecture come about. Not until the 1920s did the use of the study of aerodynamics do for the design of sails and rigging what science had already done for hulls.
Because nearly all sailboats had been individually custom-built, there came a desire for handicapping boats as this was previous to the one-design class boats were made. Thus, a rating rule was written, which is found in the International Rule, adopted in 1906 and revised in 1919. Today, one of the most rapidly blossoming areas in the field of sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are manufactured to single requirements in length, beam, sail area, and other elements (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing those boats can be had on an even keel with no handicapping necessary. A perfect example is the generic International America’s Cup Class adopted for racers in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
So long as yachting belonged mostly for the aristocracy and the wealthy, money was no problem, and the size of boats grew, in both length and weight. The rise and preference of smaller boats came in the later half of the 19th century out of 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) captained single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray demonstrated the seaworthiness of small boats. Later in the 20th century, particularly after World War II, smaller racing and leisure yachts became more popular, down to the dinghy, a preferred 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
Post the decade 1840–50, at which point steam started to replace sail power in market boats, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were employed more and more in personal boats. Bigger power yachts were progressed to a high element, and long-distance travel became a favourite occupation of the affluent. The first power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then gave way to yachts powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. Like naval and merchant craft, auxiliaries possessing both sail and power were the yacht standard for several years. By the later half of the 20th century, several yachts were still auxiliaries, but the larger part were solely power yachts containing gasoline or diesel engines.
From the last decade of the 19th century there was a push in the construction of bigger steam yachts. Conspicuous 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 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 during World War II.
As larger and more dependable internal-combustion engines were produced, many big boats were using them for power. The creation of the diesel engine, with heavy oil for fuel, was furthered from World War I. In the decade that followed, bigger power-yacht manufacture blossomed, reaching a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. During that point the biggest auxiliary yacht constructed was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The construction of big power craft fell away from 1932, and the fashion from then was toward smaller, less expensive craft. From World War II, lots of small naval craft were bought by private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting had become a widespread beloved sport enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen personally owning and maintaining their own small pleasure yachts. The number of craft and yachtsmen increased steadily, not only in the traditional places by the beach but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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