Yachting and Yacht Clubs
As the Dutch rose to preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the early yacht had been a leisure craft used mostly by royalty and secondly by the burghers for the canals as well as the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing yachts was incidental, coming out of private matches. English yachting began 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 gave him a 20-metre (66-foot) leisure 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, ruled 1685–88), ordered for more 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 became popular with the rich and royalty, but after that period the habit did not last.
The first yacht club in the British Isles, the Water Club, was formed in about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard association, and had large naval panoply and rigour. The closest thing to racing was the “chase,” in which the “fleet” pursued a fictional enemy. The club went on, for the large part as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, after conglomerating with other organisations, it became the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was first seen in some ordered manner on the Thames in the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland founded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV rose to sovereignty in 1820, it was named 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 association had been initiated 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 continued site of British racing. The association at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, again at the rise of George IV. Each member was required to possess boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing matches for great bets were held, and the social life was lovely. Ultimately Royal Yachting Club boats increased in size to bigger than 350 tons.
In North America, yachting began 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 that area from the late 19th century. The first continuing American yacht group, the Detroit Boat Club, was formed in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens instigated the New York Yacht Club aboard his schooner Gimcrack.
Kinds of sailboats
The first sailing yachts were within the design 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 affected by the success of America, which was drawn by George Steers for a syndicate started by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) had its namesake after its success at Cowes in 1851. The first yachts were not designed and built in a contemporary sense, with merely a model used. Not until the latter half of the 19th century did what was labeled naval architecture come into being. Not until the 1920s did the employment of the study of aerodynamics do for the craft of sails and rigging what such study had previously done for hulls.
Because nearly all sailboats had to be individually built, there was a need for handicapping boats previous to the one-design class boats were made. Thus, a rating rule was decreed, which resulted 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 standard requirements 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 playing field with no handicapping required. A prime example is the uniform International America’s Cup Class taken on board for yachts in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
So long as yachting belonged primarily for the aristocracy and the affluent, cost was no object, and the size of boats increased, in both length and weight. The rise and preference of smaller yachts occurred in the later 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) led single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray proved the seaworthiness of small boats. Thereafter in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and leisure yachts became commonplace, down to the dinghy, a favourite training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, craft of less than 3 m were setting sail single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.
Kinds of power yachts
After the decade 1840–50, when steam started to replace sail power in commercial craft, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly used in leisure craft. Large power yachts were developed to a high degree, and long-distance cruising turned into a preferred pastime of the wealthy. The earliest power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then gave rise to boats powered by the fully submerged screw or propeller sort of propulsion. Like naval and merchant yachts, auxiliaries carrying both sail and power were the yacht standard for several years. By the second half of the 20th century, several yachts were still auxiliaries, but the larger part were exclusively power yachts with gasoline or diesel engines.
In the last decade of the 19th century there was a boom in the construction of large steam yachts. Notably of 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 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 saw active service during World War II.
As larger and more reliable internal-combustion engines were created, many large yachts were using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, advanced during World War I. From the decade following, large power-yacht manufacture flourished, hitting a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. From that time the biggest auxiliary yacht constructed was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The manufacture of bigger power craft declined in 1932, and the trend after that was for smaller, less costly craft. Following World War II, many small naval boats were sold to private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting is a globally beloved competition enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen who are actually owning and maintaining their own small pleasure yachts. The number of boats and yachtsmen increased steadily, not only in the traditional locations along the seacoasts but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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