Yachting and Yacht Clubs
As the Dutch found preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the early yacht became a pleasure craft used first by royalty and then by the burghers in the canals and then in the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Yacht racing was incidental, arising as private challenges. 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) leisure 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 additional yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and returning, on a £100 wager. Yachting became fashionable with the affluent and aristocracy, but after that time 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 group, and held large naval panoply and formality. The closest thing to racing boats was the “chase,” for which the “fleet” pursued an imagined enemy. The club went on, for the large part as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, by conglomerating with other societies, it became known as 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 founded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV rose to the throne in 1820, it was then known as the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded after a racing dispute, 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 location of British racing. The organisation at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, also at the ascension of George IV. All members were required to have boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing matches for large stakes were held, and the club life was splendid. Eventually Royal Yachting Club boats were raised in size to bigger than 350 tons.
In North America, yachting began with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and went on when the English had control. Sailing was largely for fun and found its epitome in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which traveled on the Mediterranean Sea and established a benchmark of luxury and sophistication for the later yachts in the area from the late 19th century. The first enduring American yacht organisation, the Detroit Boat Club, was formed 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 were within the lines of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through the latter half of the 19th century. The style of bigger yachts was first largely put upon by the success of America, which was designed by George Steers for a syndicate started by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) found its namesake after its success at Cowes in 1851. The first yachts were not designed and manufactured in today’s sense, with merely a model for an outline. Not until the later half of the 19th century did what was labeled naval architecture come about. Not until the 1920s did the employment of the science of aerodynamics do for the structure of sails and rigging what such study had earlier done for hulls.
Because almost all sailboats had to be individually built, there was a desire for handicapping boats before the one-design class boats were designed. Hence, a rating rule was created, which resulted in the International Rule, taken on in 1906 and edited in 1919. In modern times, one of the fastest growing areas in the field of sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are created to single dimensions in length, beam, sail area, and other aspects (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing these boats can be done on an even playing field with no handicapping required. A prime example is the uniform International America’s Cup Class adopted for racers in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
For the time that yachting was an activity largely for the aristocracy and the rich, cost was no problem, and the size of boats developed, in both length and weight. The rise and preference of smaller yachts came 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 voyage 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 yachts. Thereafter in the 20th century, particularly after World War II, smaller racing and pleasure yachts 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 setting sail single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.
Kinds of power yachts
Following the decade 1840–50, in which steam was set to take the place of sail power in public vessels, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were used increasingly in leisure craft. Bigger power yachts were furthered to a high standard, and long-distance travel turned into a favoured occupation of the well off. The earliest power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; they then gave way to boats powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller sort of propulsion. As well as naval and merchant boats, auxiliaries possessing both sail and power were the yacht standard for a number of years. By the latter half of the 20th century, several yachts were still auxiliaries, but the large part were solely power yachts containing gasoline or diesel engines.
In the last decade of the 19th century there was a boom in the construction of more sizeable steam yachts. Notably of these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, containing 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 was used in active service for World War II.
As larger and more dependable internal-combustion engines were created, many bigger yachts started using them for power. The establishment of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, was furthered from World War I. In the decade after, big power-yacht manufacture blossomed, climaxing in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. From that period the best auxiliary yacht constructed was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The manufacture of big power yachts fell away in 1932, and the trend thereafter was toward smaller, less pricey craft. Following World War II, a lot of small naval craft were sold to private owners for conversion to yachts. In the late 20th century, yachting is a internationally loved competition enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen who are actually manning and maintaining their own small pleasure craft. The amount of yachts and sailors has increased steadily, not only in the traditional areas along the seacoasts but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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