Yachting and Yacht Clubs
As the Dutch found dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht was a leisure craft used mostly by royalty and secondly by the burghers on the canals and then in the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Yacht racing was incidental, coming out of private challenges. English yachting started with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his restoration to the English monarchy in 1660, the city of Amsterdam sent him a 20-metre (66-foot) pleasure 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, sovereign 1685–88), built additional 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 among the rich and nobility, but after that period the habit 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 group, and had great naval panoply and formality. The closest thing to racing boats was the “chase,” in 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 merging with other groups, it became the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing began in some stipulated fashion on the Thames around the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland instigated the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV rose to the throne in 1820, it came to be known as the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded with a racing fight, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht society 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 continuing setting of British yachting. The association at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, also at the rise of George IV. Every member was required to have boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing tests for large bets were held, and the club life was superlative. Eventually Royal Yachting Club boats were raised in size to bigger than 350 tons.
In North America, yachting was first accomplished with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and continued when the English gained control. Sailing was for the most part for pleasure and rose to 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 continuing American yacht organisation, the Detroit Boat Club, was instigated in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens began the New York Yacht Club while aboard his schooner Gimcrack.
Kinds of sailboats
Early sailing yachts followed the lines of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through the later half of the 19th century. The craft of bigger yachts was initially heavily put upon by the win of America, which was designed by George Steers for a syndicate led 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 just a model used. Not until the later half of the 19th century did what was known as naval architecture come about. Not until the 1920s did the use of the study of aerodynamics do for the design of sails and rigging what science had done earlier for hulls.
Because almost all sailboats were individually custom-built, there came a need for handicapping boats as this was previous to the one-design class boats were built. Hence, a rating rule was decreed, which ended up in the International Rule, taken on in 1906 and revised in 1919. Today, one of the rapidly blossoming areas in sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are manufactured to single requirements in length, beam, sail area, and other aspects (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing for such boats can be done on an even keel with no handicapping required. A great example is the standard International America’s Cup Class taken on board for yachts in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
As long as yachting was done largely for the aristocracy and the affluent, money was no issue, and the size of boats grew, in both length and weight. The promotion 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) led single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray demonstrated the hardiness of less sizeable boats. Following this in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and leisure craft became more popular, down to the dinghy, a popular training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, craft of less than 3 m were traveled in single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.
Kinds of power yachts
Post the decade 1840–50, in which steam was set to emulate sail power in public craft, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly employed in leisure craft. Sizeable power yachts were developed to a high element, and long-distance sailing became a favoured activity of the well off. The earliest power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then gave rise to boats powered by the fully submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. As well as naval and merchant boats, auxiliaries with both sail and power were the yacht archetype for a number of years. By the latter half of the 20th century, several yachts were still auxiliaries, but the majority were solely power yachts containing gasoline or diesel engines.
From the last decade of the 19th century there was a push in the construction of more sizeable steam yachts. Notably of 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 at least 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 in World War II.
As larger and more reliable internal-combustion engines were produced, many bigger boats began using them for power. The creation of the diesel engine, using heavy oil for fuel, was furthered from World War I. In the decade that followed, large power-yacht manufacture grew, climaxing in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. During that period the best auxiliary yacht constructed was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The construction of larger power craft fell away in 1932, and the fashion from then was in preference of smaller, less pricey yachts. From World War II, lots of small naval craft were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. By the late 20th century, yachting had become a globally beloved competition enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen personally manning and keeping their own small leisure yachts. The popularity of craft and owners increased steadily, not only in the traditional locations by the seacoasts but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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