Yachting and Yacht Clubs
As the Dutch came to preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the initial yacht was a pleasure craft used initially by royalty and secondly by the burghers on the canals as well as the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing yachts was incidental, borne from private challenges. English yachting started 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 presented him with a 20-metre (66-foot) pleasure boat with a beam (maximum width) of 5.6 m (18 feet), which he 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 punt. Yachting was found to be popular with the wealthy and royalty, 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 group, with large naval panoply and gravity. The closest thing to racing boats was the “chase,” when the “fleet” pursued an imaginary enemy. The club persisted, mostly as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, when merging with other organisations, it was known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was first seen in some ordered method on the Thames in the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland funded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV ascended 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 after a racing fight, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht group had been started at Cowes on the Isle of Wight in 1815, and royal funding made the Solent - the strait between the mainland and the Isle of Wight - the continued location of British yachting. The society at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, again at the rise of George IV. All members were required to own boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing tests for great stakes were held, and the club life was splendid. It came to be that the Royal Yachting Club boats increased in size to bigger than 350 tons.
In North America, yachting started with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and went on when the English had power. Sailing was mostly for fun and reached its high point in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which traveled on the Mediterranean Sea and set a minimum of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in the area from the late 19th century. The first persisting American yacht club, 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
Early sailing yachts were within the style 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 initially heavily put upon by the victory of America, which was created by George Steers for a association started 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. Early yachts were not designed and built in the modern sense, with just a model 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 use of the study of aerodynamics do for the structure of sails and rigging what it had already done for hulls.
Because most of all sailboats were individually built, there arose a requirement for handicapping boats previous to the one-design class boats were built. Therefore, a rating rule came into being, which resulted in the International Rule, taken on in 1906 and amended in 1919. In the present day, one of the fastest blossoming areas in the field of sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are built to standard requirements in length, beam, sail area, and other areas (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing between these boats can be held on an even playing field with no handicapping necessary. A perfect example is the standard International America’s Cup Class taken on board for racers in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
For the time that yachting belonged primarily for the nobility and the wealthy, expense was no problem, and the size of boats developed, in both length and weight. The ascendancy and desire of smaller boats came in the later half of the 19th century out of 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 demonstrated the seaworthiness of smaller yachts. Later in the 20th century, particularly after World War II, smaller racing and recreational boats became commonplace, down to the dinghy, a favourite training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, boats of less than 3 m were traveled in single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.
Kinds of power yachts
After the decade 1840–50, during which steam began to take the place of sail power in commercial boats, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were employed increasingly in leisure boats. Bigger power yachts were progressed to a high element, and long-distance sailing turned into a favoured activity of the well off. The first power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; these then made way to boats powered by the completely submerged screw or propeller sort of propulsion. As well as naval and merchant yachts, auxiliaries possessing both sail and power were the yacht standard for several years. By the latter half of the 20th century, a lot of yachts were still auxiliaries, but the larger part were exclusively power yachts containing gasoline or diesel engines.
From the last decade of the 19th century there was a rise in the manufacture of bigger steam yachts. Notably among these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, that had triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was operated by a crew of over 150. The Mayflower, bought 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 bigger and more dependable internal-combustion engines were produced, many big boats started using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, progressed for World War I. During the decade after that, large power-yacht building grew, hitting a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. In that period the best auxiliary yacht manufactured was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The construction of big power boats lessened from 1932, and the fashion from then was toward smaller, less costly yachts. After World War II, lots of small naval craft were bought by private owners for conversion to yachts. By the late 20th century, yachting had become a internationally popular competition enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen who are actually owning and upkeeping their own small leisure craft. The amount of yachts and owners is increasing steadily, not only in the traditional locations on the seacoasts but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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