Yachting and Yacht Clubs
As the Dutch rose to 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. Racing yachts was incidental, borne from private challenges. English yachting originated 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 sent 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, sovereign 1685–88), built other yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and returning, on a £100 punt. Yachting rose as fashionable with the wealthy and aristocracy, but after that time the fashion did not last.
The first yacht group in the British Isles, the Water Club, was started in about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard association, with great naval panoply and gravity. The closest thing to a race was the “chase,” when the “fleet” pursued an imagined enemy. The club endured, mostly as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, after joining with other societies, it was known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was seen 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 ascended to sovereignty in 1820, it was named the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded following a racing dispute, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht association had been formed 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 continuing location of British yachting. The organisation at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, likewise at the ascension of George IV. Every member was required to have boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing races for great bids were held, and the social life was wonderful. It came to be that the Royal Yachting Club boats increased in size to more than 350 tons.
In North America, yachting was first accomplished with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and persisted when the English held control. Sailing was for the most part for pleasure and rose to its epitome in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which cruised on the Mediterranean Sea and set a benchmark of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in that area from the late 19th century. The first persisting American yacht society, the Detroit Boat Club, was started in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens founded the New York Yacht Club aboard his schooner Gimcrack.
Kinds of sailboats
The Early sailing yachts took the style of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through the second half of the 19th century. The craft of sizeable yachts was first largely impacted by the victory of America, which was designed by George Steers for a group headed 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. Early yachts were not designed and manufactured in the modern sense, with only a model being used. Not until the second half of the 19th century did what was called naval architecture come into being. Not until the 1920s did the application of the research of aerodynamics do for the craft of sails and rigging what science had earlier done for hulls.
Because nearly all sailboats had to be individually manufactured, there arose a need for handicapping boats previous to the one-design class boats were built. Hence, a rating rule was decreed, which resulted in the International Rule, adopted in 1906 and edited in 1919. In the present day, one of the fastest flourishing 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 areas (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing for these boats can be held on an even par with no handicapping required. A prime example is the standard International America’s Cup Class taken on for participants in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
For the time that yachting was an activity primarily for the nobility and the affluent, money 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 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) sailed single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray demonstrated the value of small boats. Thereafter in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and pleasure craft became commonplace, down to the dinghy, a preferred 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
After the decade 1840–50, in which steam was set to replace sail power in market boats, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly favoured in leisure yachts. Sizeable power yachts were furthered to a high degree, and long-distance cruising turned into a preferred pastime of the rich. The first power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then gave way to those powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. As well as naval and merchant yachts, auxiliaries with both sail and power were the yacht fashion for several years. By the latter half of the 20th century, a lot of yachts were still auxiliaries, but the larger part were solely power yachts that had gasoline or diesel engines.
From the last decade of the 19th century there was a boom in the construction of large steam yachts. Notably within 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, purchased 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 during World War II.
As more sizeable and better quality internal-combustion engines were produced, many bigger yachts began using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, using heavy oil for fuel, was furthered from World War I. From the decade following that, big power-yacht creation grew, hitting a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. From that point the biggest auxiliary yacht manufactured was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The building of large power boats fell away from 1932, and the style from then was for smaller, less pricey craft. From World War II, many small naval craft were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. In the late 20th century, yachting is a internationally loved sport enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen who are actually manning and maintaining their own small recreational craft. The number of yachts and owners has increased steadily, not only in the traditional places along the sea but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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