Yachting and Yacht Clubs
As the Dutch found dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the early yacht became a pleasure craft used first by royalty and later by the burghers on the canals and the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing was incidental, borne from private matches. 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) 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 returning, on a £100 bet. Yachting rose as popular with the wealthy and nobility, but after that period the fashion did not last.
The first yacht association in the British Isles, the Water Club, was started around about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard association, and had large naval panoply and gravity. The closest thing to racing was the “chase,” in which the “fleet” pursued an imaginary enemy. The club went on, mostly as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, by joining with other groups, it was known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing began in some ordered manner on the Thames in the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland founded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV ascended to monarchy in 1820, it was then called the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded with a racing fight, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht organisation 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 perpetual setting of British racing. The club at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, again at the accession of George IV. Every member was required to possess boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing tests for large bets were held, and the society life was splendid. It came to be that the Royal Yachting Club boats grew in size to over 350 tons.
In North America, yachting began with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and continued when the English gained power. Sailing was largely for pleasure and reached its apogee in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which traveled on the Mediterranean Sea and set a minimum of luxury and sophistication for the later yachts in that area from the late 19th century. The first persisting American yacht group, 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 Early sailing yachts were within the style of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through the second half of the 19th century. The craft of bigger yachts was originally greatly put upon by the win of America, which was drawn by George Steers for a club started by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) had its namesake after its success at Cowes in 1851. The first yachts were not designed and crafted in the modern sense, with only a model being used. Not until the second half of the 19th century did what was called naval architecture come about. Not until the 1920s did the employment of the study of aerodynamics do for the design of sails and rigging what science had previously done for hulls.
Because most of all sailboats were individually built, there came a requirement for handicapping boats as this was previous to the one-design class boats were designed. Hence, a rating rule was created, which is found in the International Rule, accepted in 1906 and amended in 1919. In the present day, one of the rapidly blossoming areas in the sailing industry is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are manufactured to the same requirements in length, beam, sail area, and other aspects (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing those boats can be held on an even par with no handicapping at all. A great example is the generic International America’s Cup Class adopted for participants in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
As long as yachting was done mostly for the royal and the rich, cost was no issue, and the size of boats developed, in both length and weight. The rise and preference of smaller craft happened 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 craft. Following this in the 20th century, notably after World War II, smaller racing and pleasure boats became commonplace, down to the dinghy, a preferred training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, craft of less than 3 m were sailed single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.
Kinds of power yachts
Post the decade 1840–50, during which steam began to replace sail power in market boats, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were employed more and more in pleasure boats. Sizeable power yachts were progressed to a high degree, and long-distance sailing was a fond pastime of the wealthy. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; they then gave rise to those powered by the fully submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. As in the case of naval and merchant craft, auxiliaries with both sail and power were the yacht standard for several years. By the second half of the 20th century, a lot of yachts were still auxiliaries, but the large part were only power yachts with gasoline or diesel engines.
In the last decade of the 19th century there was a push in the design of more sizeable steam yachts. Notably of 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 more than 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 gave active service in World War II.
As bigger and more reliable internal-combustion engines were created, many big yachts were using them for power. The creation of the diesel engine, with heavy oil for fuel, advanced in World War I. From the decade after that, big power-yacht manufacture flourished, climaxing in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. In that time the best 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 for smaller, less pricey boats. Following World War II, a lot of small naval vessels were sold to private owners for conversion to yachts. In the late 20th century, yachting has become a internationally loved activity enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen personally owning and maintaining their own small pleasure yachts. The number of craft and yachtsmen has increased steadily, not only in the traditional areas on the seacoasts but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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