Yachting and Yacht Clubs
As the Dutch came to dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the early yacht was a pleasure craft used first by royalty and secondly by the burghers for the canals and the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing was incidental, borne from private games. English yachting started 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) leisure 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), built additional yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and returning, on a £100 punt. Yachting was found to be classy among the affluent and nobility, but after that time the trend did not last.
The first yacht club in the British Isles, the Water Club, was instigated around about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard association, and had great naval panoply and formality. The closest thing to racing was the “chase,” when the “fleet” pursued an imagined enemy. The club went on, mostly as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, when joining with other organisations, it became the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing began 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 came to be named the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded after a racing fight, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht society had been initiated 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 continued site of British yachting. The organisation at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, also at the ascension of George IV. Every member was required to have boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing matches for large stakes were held, and the society life was wonderful. It came to be that the Royal Yachting Club boats were raised 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 took power. Sailing was mostly for pleasure and found its epitome in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which cruised on the Mediterranean Sea and set a standard of luxury and sophistication for the later yachts in the area from the late 19th century. The first enduring American yacht society, the Detroit Boat Club, was instigated in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens began the New York Yacht Club aboard his schooner Gimcrack.
Kinds of sailboats
The first sailing yachts were within the design of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century until the second half of the 19th century. The craft of sizeable yachts was initially largely put upon by the success of America, which was created by George Steers for a association 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 the modern sense, with just a model for an outline. 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 application of the study of aerodynamics do for the design of sails and rigging what such science had earlier done for hulls.
Because nearly all sailboats had to be individually built, there arose a need for handicapping boats as this was before the one-design class boats were built. Therefore, a rating rule was written, which ended up in the International Rule, accepted in 1906 and amended in 1919. In the present day, one of the most rapidly flourishing areas in sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are created to the same specifications in length, beam, sail area, and other aspects (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing these boats can be held on an even basis with no handicapping necessary. A great example is the generic International America’s Cup Class taken on board for yachts in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
So long as yachting belonged primarily for the nobility and the rich, money was no issue, and the size of boats increased, in both length and weight. The promotion and preference of smaller boats occurred in the latter 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 voyage around the world (1895–98) sailed single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray proved the hardiness of smaller craft. Following this in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and pleasure craft became commonplace, 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
Following the decade 1840–50, during which steam began to replace sail power in commercial vessels, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were used increasingly in leisure yachts. Bigger power yachts were progressed to a high standard, and long-distance cruising was a preferred activity of the well off. The first power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; they then gave way to yachts powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller sort of propulsion. Like naval and merchant vessels, auxiliaries carrying both sail and power were the yacht fashion for many years. By the second half of the 20th century, many yachts were still auxiliaries, but the large part were exclusively power yachts that had gasoline or diesel engines.
During the last decade of the 19th century there was a rise in the design of bigger steam yachts. Conspicuous of these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, containing triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was sailed 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 bigger and better quality internal-combustion engines were produced, many bigger boats started using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, using heavy oil for fuel, progressed during World War I. From the decade following, large power-yacht manufacture blossomed, hitting a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. From that point the largest auxiliary yacht built was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The construction of larger power craft lessened after 1932, and the style from then was toward smaller, less pricey yachts. Following World War II, a lot of small naval boats were bought by private owners for conversion to yachts. In the late 20th century, yachting is a internationally popular competition enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen personally owning and maintaining their own small pleasure yachts. The number of boats and owners increased steadily, not only in the traditional areas by the sea but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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