Yachting and Yacht Clubs
As the Dutch came to dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the initial yacht had been a leisure craft used mostly by royalty and secondly by the burghers for the canals as well as the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Yacht racing was incidental, coming out of private games. English yachting originated with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his reaffirmation to the English monarchy in 1660, the city of Amsterdam sent him a 20-metre (66-foot) leisure boat with a beam (maximum width) of 5.6 m (18 feet), which he named Mary. Charles and his brother James, the duke of York (James II, ruled 1685–88), made more yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and returning, on a £100 bet. Yachting rose as classy for the affluent and aristocracy, but after that point the trend did not last.
The first yacht association in the British Isles, the Water Club, was formed in about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard organization, and held much naval panoply and formality. The closest thing to racing boats was the “chase,” in which the “fleet” pursued an imagined enemy. The club endured, largely as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, when merging with other groups, it became the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing began 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 ascended to monarchy in 1820, it was named the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded following 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 racing. The organisation at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, also at the ascension of George IV. Every member was required to own boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing races for great stakes were held, and the social life was superlative. It came to be that the Royal Yachting Club boats increased in size to more than 350 tons.
In North America, yachting started with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and persisted when the English gained control. Sailing was mostly for fun and reached its high point in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which cruised on the Mediterranean Sea and established a benchmark 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 started in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens began the New York Yacht Club while aboard his schooner Gimcrack.
Kinds of sailboats
Early sailing yachts took the style of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century until the latter half of the 19th century. The design of large yachts was first largely put upon by the victory 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.) found its namesake after its win at Cowes in 1851. The first yachts were not designed and built in a contemporary sense, with just a model used. Not until the second half of the 19th century did what was known as naval architecture come about. Not until the 1920s did the application of the study of aerodynamics do for the craft of sails and rigging what it had done earlier for hulls.
Because almost all sailboats had been individually manufactured, there was a need for handicapping boats before the one-design class boats were built. Therefore, a rating rule was decreed, which is found in the International Rule, accepted in 1906 and edited in 1919. In the present day, one of the rapidly growing areas in the field of sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are built to standard specifications 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 basis with no handicapping required. A great example is the uniform International America’s Cup Class adopted for racers in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
So long as yachting was an activity mostly for the royal and the wealthy, cost was no issue, and the size of boats grew, in both length and weight. The ascendancy and desire of smaller boats came in the later 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 journey around the world (1895–98) captained single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray proved the seaworthiness of smaller boats. Thereafter in the 20th century, notably after World War II, smaller racing and recreational boats became more common, down to the dinghy, a preferred training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, yachts of less than 3 m were setting sail single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.
Kinds of power yachts
Post the decade 1840–50, during which steam was set to emulate sail power in market craft, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly used in pleasure boats. Sizeable power yachts were developed to a high standard, and long-distance cruising was a preferred pastime of the well off. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then made way to those powered by the fully submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. As in the case of naval and merchant yachts, auxiliaries with both sail and power were the yacht standard for many years. By the second half of the 20th century, many yachts were still auxiliaries, but the majority were exclusively power yachts that had gasoline or diesel engines.
From the last decade of the 19th century there was a push in the design of large 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 manned 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 gave active service during World War II.
As larger and more reliable internal-combustion engines were produced, many large craft began using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, using heavy oil for fuel, progressed for World War I. From the decade that followed, large power-yacht manufacture flourished, climaxing in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. During that point the best auxiliary yacht built was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The manufacture of large power yachts lessened from 1932, and the fashion thereafter was in preference of smaller, less costly boats. Following World War II, many small naval boats were bought by private owners for conversion to yachts. By the late 20th century, yachting is a globally beloved activity enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen individually sailing and maintaining their own small recreational yachts. The amount of yachts and owners has increased steadily, not only in the traditional places by the beach but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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