Yachting and Yacht Clubs
As the Dutch came to dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht had been a leisure 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. Racing yachts was incidental, arising as private games. English yachting started with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his return 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), made more yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and back, on a £100 punt. Yachting rose as popular with the rich and aristocracy, but after that time the habit did not last.
The first yacht group in the British Isles, the Water Club, was formed around about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard group, and had much naval panoply and rigour. The closest thing to racing boats was the “chase,” for which the “fleet” pursued an imaginary enemy. The club went on, for the large part as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, by joining with other societies, it became the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was seen in some ordered 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 rose to sovereignty in 1820, it was then called the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded following a racing fight, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht group had been started 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 site of British yachting. The club at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, likewise at the ascension of George IV. All members were required to have boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing races for great bids were held, and the society life was superlative. Ultimately 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 went on when the English held control. Sailing was for the most part for pleasure and reached its high point in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which sailed on the Mediterranean Sea and established a standard of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in those waters from the late 19th century. The first persisting American yacht society, the Detroit Boat Club, was formed in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens founded 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 through to the latter half of the 19th century. The design of large yachts was initially largely put upon by the win of America, which was drawn by George Steers for a syndicate started by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) was named after its victory at Cowes in 1851. Early yachts were not designed and crafted in today’s sense, with only 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 science of aerodynamics do for the design of sails and rigging what such study had done earlier for hulls.
Because nearly all sailboats had to be individually custom-built, there arose a requirement for handicapping boats before the one-design class boats were built. Hence, a rating rule was decreed, which resulted in the International Rule, taken on in 1906 and edited in 1919. Today, 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 created to single dimensions in length, beam, sail area, and other areas (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing these boats can be held on an even basis with no handicapping at all. A great example is the uniform International America’s Cup Class taken on for racers in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
So long as yachting was done mostly for the nobility and the wealthy, cost was no object, and the size of boats increased, in both length and weight. The rise and popularity of smaller boats occurred in the later half of the 19th century in 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 made plain the seaworthiness of small craft. Later in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and pleasure yachts became more popular, down to the dinghy, a favourite 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, during which steam started to take the place of sail power in commercial vessels, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly employed in pleasure craft. Large power yachts were developed to a high element, and long-distance travel turned into a fond pastime of the rich. The earliest power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; these then gave way to yachts powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. As in the case of naval and merchant craft, auxiliaries possessing both sail and power were the yacht standard for a number of years. By the second half of the 20th century, many yachts were still auxiliaries, but the large part were solely power yachts containing gasoline or diesel engines.
During the last decade of the 19th century there was a push in the design of more sizeable steam yachts. In particular within these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, that had triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was sailed by a crew of over 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 better quality internal-combustion engines were produced, many large craft started using them for power. The establishment of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, progressed in World War I. From the decade that followed, big power-yacht creation blossomed, climaxing in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. From that time the largest auxiliary yacht manufactured was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The building of large power yachts declined from 1932, and the fashion thereafter was in preference of smaller, less pricey yachts. After World War II, a lot of small naval vessels were sold to private owners for conversion to yachts. In the late 20th century, yachting had become a widespread popular activity enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen individually manning and maintaining their own small leisure boats. The number of craft and sailors has increased steadily, not only in the traditional locations on the seacoasts but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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