Yachting and Yacht Clubs
As the Dutch found dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht had been a pleasure craft used first by royalty and secondly by the burghers for the canals and then in the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Yacht racing was incidental, arising as private matches. English yachting began 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) 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 rose as popular for the wealthy and nobility, but after that point the trend 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 association, with much naval panoply and rigour. The closest thing to racing boats was the “chase,” when the “fleet” pursued an imagined enemy. The club endured, for the large part as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, after joining with other organisations, 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 instigated the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV came to monarchy in 1820, it came to be called the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded after a racing dispute, 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 patronage made the Solent - the strait between the mainland and the Isle of Wight - the continued setting of British yacht racing. The association at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, again at the accession of George IV. All members were required to own boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing tests for large bets were held, and the society life was superlative. It came to be that the Royal Yachting Club boats were raised in size to over 350 tons.
In North America, yachting started with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and went on when the English took power. Sailing was for the most part for pleasure and reached its apogee 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 association, the Detroit Boat Club, was instigated in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens began the New York Yacht Club aboard his schooner Gimcrack.
Kinds of sailboats
The Early sailing yachts followed the lines of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through to the later half of the 19th century. The design of large yachts was first greatly impacted by the win of America, which was created 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 win at Cowes in 1851. The first yachts were not designed and crafted in today’s sense, with only a model used. Not until the latter half of the 19th century did what was labeled naval architecture come into action. Not until the 1920s did the application of the research of aerodynamics do for the structure of sails and rigging what such study had already done for hulls.
Because almost all sailboats had to be individually built, there was a requirement for handicapping boats as this was before the one-design class boats were made. Therefore, a rating rule came into being, which is found in the International Rule, adopted in 1906 and edited in 1919. In the present day, one of the most rapidly growing areas in the field of sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are manufactured to the same dimensions in length, beam, sail area, and other elements (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing those boats can be done on an even par with no handicapping necessary. A great example is the standard International America’s Cup Class taken on board for yachts in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
So long as yachting was done mostly for the royal and the affluent, cost was no problem, and the size of boats grew, in both length and weight. The promotion and desire of smaller craft occurred in the latter 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 trip 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 less sizeable craft. Thereafter in the 20th century, notably after World War II, smaller racing and pleasure boats became commonplace, down to the dinghy, a favourite training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, yachts of less than 3 m were setting sail single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.
Kinds of power yachts
After the decade 1840–50, during which steam was set to take the place of sail power in market craft, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly employed in pleasure yachts. Bigger power yachts were developed to a high degree, and long-distance travel became a favoured occupation of the affluent. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then gave way to yachts powered by the completely submerged screw or propeller sort of propulsion. As well as naval and merchant yachts, auxiliaries with both sail and power were the yacht standard for many years. By the latter half of the 20th century, a lot of yachts were still auxiliaries, but the majority were only power yachts that had gasoline or diesel engines.
In the last decade of the 19th century there was a rise in the design of bigger steam yachts. Conspicuous within these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, containing triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was operated 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 gave active service in World War II.
As bigger and more reliable internal-combustion engines were created, many bigger craft started using them for power. The establishment of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, was furthered for World War I. During the decade following that, large power-yacht creation blossomed, climaxing in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. In that point the biggest auxiliary yacht manufactured was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The building of big power yachts declined from 1932, and the fashion after that was toward smaller, less pricey craft. Following World War II, many small naval boats were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. In the late 20th century, yachting is a globally loved competition enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen who are actually manning and keeping their own small leisure boats. The popularity of boats and sailors has increased steadily, not only in the traditional locations along the seacoasts but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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