Yachting and Yacht Clubs
As the Dutch found dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht was a pleasure craft used mostly by royalty and later by the burghers on the canals as well as the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Yacht 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 reaffirmation to the English monarchy in 1660, the city of Amsterdam sent him a 20-metre (66-foot) leisure 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), made additional yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and back, on a £100 wager. Yachting was found to be popular for the affluent and aristocracy, but after that point the fashion 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 organization, with much naval panoply and formality. The closest thing to racing boats was the “chase,” when the “fleet” pursued an imagined enemy. The club persisted, largely as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, when merging with other clubs, it was known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing began in some ordered manner on the Thames in the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland instigated the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV ascended to the throne in 1820, it was named the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded with a racing argument, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht organisation had been formed 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 setting of British yachting. The organisation at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, likewise at the rise of George IV. Every member was required to possess boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing tests for great bets were held, and the society life was wonderful. It came to be that the Royal Yachting Club boats increased in size to more than 350 tons.
In North America, yachting started with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and went on when the English gained power. Sailing was mostly for fun and found its apogee in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which traveled on the Mediterranean Sea and established a standard of luxury and sophistication for the later yachts in that area from the late 19th century. The first persisting American yacht club, the Detroit Boat Club, was formed in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens began the New York Yacht Club while aboard 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 through to the second half of the 19th century. The craft of bigger yachts was first greatly affected by the win of America, which was designed 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. Early yachts were not designed and built in the modern sense, with just a model being used. Not until the second half of the 19th century did what was called naval architecture come into action. Not until the 1920s did the application of the research of aerodynamics do for the craft of sails and rigging what such study had done earlier for hulls.
Because nearly all sailboats had to be individually manufactured, there came a desire for handicapping boats as this was before the one-design class boats were built. Hence, a rating rule was created, which is found in the International Rule, accepted in 1906 and edited in 1919. Today, one of the most rapidly flourishing areas in the field of sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are created to the same requirements in length, beam, sail area, and other areas (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing those boats can be held on an even keel with no handicapping at all. A great example is the standard International America’s Cup Class taken on board for racers in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
As long as yachting belonged mostly for the nobility and the wealthy, money was no issue, and the size of boats developed, in both length and weight. The rise and popularity of smaller yachts happened in the later 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 trip around the world (1895–98) led single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray demonstrated the hardiness of less sizeable yachts. Thereafter in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and leisure craft became more common, down to the dinghy, a preferred training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, boats of less than 3 m were setting sail single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.
Kinds of power yachts
After the decade 1840–50, in which steam was set to emulate sail power in market vessels, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly favoured in leisure yachts. Bigger power yachts were developed to a high standard, and long-distance sailing was a preferred activity of the wealthy. The first power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; they then gave rise to boats powered by the fully submerged screw or propeller type of propulsion. As in the case of naval and merchant vessels, auxiliaries possessing both sail and power were the yacht fashion for a number of years. By the second half of the 20th century, several yachts were still auxiliaries, but the larger part were solely power yachts containing gasoline or diesel engines.
From the last decade of the 19th century there was a push in the construction of more sizeable steam yachts. In particular of these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, with triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was sailed by a crew of over 150. The Mayflower, commissioned 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 larger and more dependable internal-combustion engines were produced, many large craft began using them for power. The establishment of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, progressed during World War I. From the decade following that, large power-yacht creation blossomed, hitting a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. From that time the biggest auxiliary yacht built was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The manufacture of large power craft declined after 1932, and the style after that was for smaller, less expensive yachts. After World War II, many small naval vessels were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting is a internationally loved activity enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen personally owning and upkeeping their own small leisure craft. The number of yachts and sailors increased steadily, not only in the traditional places on the seacoasts but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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