Yachting and Yacht Clubs
As the Dutch rose to preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the initial yacht was a pleasure craft used mostly by royalty and secondly by the burghers in the canals and the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing was incidental, arising as private games. English yachting originated 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) pleasure 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, reigned 1685–88), built additional yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and the same way back, on a £100 bet. Yachting was found to be popular for the wealthy and royalty, but after that period the fashion did not last.
The first yacht club in the British Isles, the Water Club, was formed at about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard organization, with great naval panoply and formality. The closest thing to racing was the “chase,” when the “fleet” pursued an imagined enemy. The club endured, mostly as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, by merging with other organisations, it became the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing began in some stipulated method on the Thames around the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland instigated the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV ascended to sovereignty in 1820, it came to be known as 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 sponsorship 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, again at the accession of George IV. Each member was required to have boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing tests for high stakes were held, and the club life was wonderful. It came to be that the Royal Yachting Club boats were raised in size to over 350 tons.
In North America, yachting was first accomplished with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and persisted when the English had control. Sailing was mostly for fun and found its apogee in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which sailed on the Mediterranean Sea and created a benchmark 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 instigated in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens instigated the New York Yacht Club while aboard his schooner Gimcrack.
Kinds of sailboats
The Early sailing yachts took the lines of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through the second half of the 19th century. The style of sizeable yachts was first greatly affected by the success of America, which was drawn by George Steers for a group 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. Earlier yachts were not designed and crafted in a contemporary sense, with just a model used. Not until the later half of the 19th century did what was labeled naval architecture come into action. Not until the 1920s did the use of the research of aerodynamics do for the structure of sails and rigging what it had previously done for hulls.
Because most of all sailboats had to be individually manufactured, there was a need for handicapping boats before the one-design class boats were designed. Thus, a rating rule was created, which ended up in the International Rule, accepted in 1906 and edited in 1919. In modern times, 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 the same dimensions in length, beam, sail area, and other aspects (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing these boats can be had on an even playing field with no handicapping necessary. A great example is the standard International America’s Cup Class adopted for participants in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
As long as yachting was done largely for the aristocracy and the affluent, expense was no object, and the size of boats increased, in both length and weight. The promotion and preference of smaller yachts occurred 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 voyage around the world (1895–98) led single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray made plain the seaworthiness of smaller yachts. Later in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and recreational boats became more popular, down to the dinghy, a favourite training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, yachts of less than 3 m were sailed single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.
Kinds of power yachts
Post the decade 1840–50, at which point steam started to replace sail power in market craft, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were favoured increasingly in leisure yachts. Sizeable power yachts were developed to a high standard, and long-distance travel became a favourite pastime of the well off. The earliest power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then made way to yachts powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. Like naval and merchant craft, auxiliaries carrying both sail and power were the yacht standard for a number of years. By the latter half of the 20th century, a lot of yachts were still auxiliaries, but the larger part were only power yachts with gasoline or diesel engines.
From the last decade of the 19th century there was a rise in the manufacture of more sizeable steam yachts. Notably within 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 for World War II.
As more sizeable and better quality internal-combustion engines were produced, many big boats began using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, using heavy oil for fuel, advanced during World War I. From the decade after that, large power-yacht manufacture grew, hitting a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. From that point the largest auxiliary yacht constructed was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The manufacture of larger power boats fell away in 1932, and the style from then was toward smaller, less pricey boats. Following World War II, many small naval boats were bought by private owners for conversion to yachts. In the late 20th century, yachting is a internationally beloved sport enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen individually manning and upkeeping their own small recreational boats. The amount of boats and sailors has increased steadily, not only in the traditional places along the beach but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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