Yachting and Yacht Clubs
As the Dutch rose to dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the early yacht became a pleasure craft used first by royalty and then by the burghers for the canals and the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing yachts was incidental, borne from private challenges. English yachting began 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 presented him with 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), ordered for other 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 became fashionable with the rich and aristocracy, but after that point the trend did not last.
The first yacht association 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 rigour. The closest thing to racing was the “chase,” for which the “fleet” pursued a fictional enemy. The club endured, for the large part as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, when joining with other societies, it was known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing began in some ordered manner on the Thames around the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland founded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV came 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 dispute, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht club had been formed 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 location of British yacht racing. The club at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, also at the rise of George IV. All members were required to have boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing tests for high bids were held, and the club life was lovely. Ultimately 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 continued when the English took control. Sailing was largely for fun and rose to its high point in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which traveled on the Mediterranean Sea and established a minimum of luxury and sophistication for the later yachts in the area from the late 19th century. The first continuing American yacht club, the Detroit Boat Club, was started in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens instigated the New York Yacht Club while aboard his schooner Gimcrack.
Kinds of sailboats
The first sailing yachts followed the design of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through the latter half of the 19th century. The style of sizeable yachts was initially greatly put upon by the success 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 victory at Cowes in 1851. Earlier yachts were not designed and built in today’s sense, with just a model used. Not until the later half of the 19th century did what was called 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 it had previously done for hulls.
Because almost all sailboats had to be individually built, there came a desire for handicapping boats previous to the one-design class boats were designed. Therefore, a rating rule was written, which is found in the International Rule, taken on in 1906 and edited in 1919. In the present day, one of the fastest flourishing areas in the sailing industry is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are built to the same specifications in length, beam, sail area, and other elements (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing for such boats can be had on an even keel with no handicapping required. A perfect example is the standard International America’s Cup Class adopted for yachts in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
For the time that yachting was an activity mostly for the royal and the rich, money was no issue, and the size of boats grew, in both length and weight. The rise and popularity of smaller boats happened 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) sailed single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray made plain the hardiness of small yachts. Following this in the 20th century, notably after World War II, smaller racing and recreational craft became more common, down to the dinghy, a popular training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, boats of less than 3 m were sailed single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.
Kinds of power yachts
Following the decade 1840–50, when steam began to replace sail power in public vessels, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were favoured increasingly in leisure vessels. Sizeable power yachts were developed to a high degree, and long-distance sailing became a preferred pastime of the rich. The first power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; these then gave rise to yachts powered by the fully submerged screw or propeller sort of propulsion. As well as naval and merchant craft, auxiliaries carrying both sail and power were the yacht archetype for several years. By the latter half of the 20th century, several 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 push in the construction of large steam yachts. Notably among these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, containing triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was sailed by a crew of at least 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 started using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, was furthered for World War I. From the decade that followed, bigger power-yacht manufacture blossomed, reaching a climax 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 big power yachts fell away after 1932, and the style from then was toward smaller, less expensive boats. After World War II, a lot of small naval vessels were bought by private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting is a globally loved competition enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen personally owning and maintaining their own small leisure boats. The number of yachts and owners is increasing steadily, not only in the traditional locations along the seacoasts but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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