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 secondly by the burghers in the canals as well as the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing was incidental, borne from private matches. English yachting started with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his restoration 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, sovereign 1685–88), ordered for 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 fashionable with the wealthy and aristocracy, but after that period the trend did not last.
The first yacht association in the British Isles, the Water Club, was formed around about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard association, and held large naval panoply and formality. The closest thing to racing boats was the “chase,” in which the “fleet” pursued a fictional enemy. The club went on, mostly as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, after merging with other clubs, it became the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was seen in some ordered method on the Thames about 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 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 started 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 perpetual site of British racing. The organisation at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, likewise at the ascension of George IV. Each member was required to own boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing matches for large bets were held, and the social life was splendid. Eventually Royal Yachting Club boats grew in size to over 350 tons.
In North America, yachting started with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and continued when the English held power. Sailing was for the most part for leisure and found its apogee in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which sailed on the Mediterranean Sea and created a standard of luxury and sophistication for the later yachts in that area from the late 19th century. The first continuing American yacht group, the Detroit Boat Club, was instigated in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens founded the New York Yacht Club while on board his schooner Gimcrack.
Kinds of sailboats
The Early sailing yachts were within the design of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century until the later half of the 19th century. The style of sizeable yachts was initially heavily put upon by the success of America, which was created by George Steers for a group headed by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) had its namesake after its win at Cowes in 1851. Earlier yachts were not designed and manufactured in a contemporary sense, with only a model for an outline. Not until the later half of the 19th century did what was known as naval architecture come into being. Not until the 1920s did the application of the science of aerodynamics do for the craft of sails and rigging what it had already done for hulls.
Because nearly all sailboats were individually custom-built, there arose a need for handicapping boats before the one-design class boats were made. Hence, a rating rule was written, which is found in the International Rule, adopted in 1906 and revised in 1919. In modern times, one of the most rapidly growing 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 elements (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing between these boats can be done on an even keel with no handicapping required. A prime example is the generic International America’s Cup Class taken on for participants in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
So long as yachting was done primarily for the royal and the wealthy, expense was no issue, and the size of boats grew, in both length and weight. The ascendancy and preference of smaller yachts 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 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 smaller craft. Following this in the 20th century, notably after World War II, smaller racing and recreational boats became more common, down to the dinghy, a favourite 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
After the decade 1840–50, when steam began to emulate sail power in public boats, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were favoured increasingly in leisure craft. Large power yachts were developed to a high standard, and long-distance travel was a fond pastime of the affluent. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then gave way to boats powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller sort of propulsion. Like naval and merchant yachts, auxiliaries with both sail and power were the yacht archetype for many years. By the later half of the 20th century, a lot of yachts were still auxiliaries, but the majority were solely power yachts with gasoline or diesel engines.
During the last decade of the 19th century there was a boom in the construction of large steam yachts. Conspicuous within these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, with triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was operated by a crew of more than 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 saw active service in World War II.
As more sizeable and more reliable internal-combustion engines were produced, many bigger yachts began using them for power. The creation of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, was furthered from World War I. During the decade following that, big power-yacht manufacture flourished, hitting a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. From that period the best auxiliary yacht built was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The building of bigger power boats fell away after 1932, and the fashion thereafter was for smaller, less costly boats. Following World War II, a lot of small naval vessels were sold to private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting had become a widespread loved sport enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen personally owning and upkeeping their own small recreational boats. The number of yachts and sailors increased steadily, not only in the traditional areas by the sea but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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