Yachting and Yacht Clubs
As the Dutch rose to preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the initial yacht became a leisure craft used first by royalty and then by the burghers on the canals and then in the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing was incidental, arising as private games. English yachting began with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his return to the English throne in 1660, the city of Amsterdam sent 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, sovereign 1685–88), ordered for other yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and returning, on a £100 wager. Yachting rose as classy with the rich and aristocracy, but after that point the habit did not last.
The first yacht club in the British Isles, the Water Club, was instigated at about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard group, and held much naval panoply and formality. The closest thing to a race was the “chase,” in which the “fleet” pursued an imaginary enemy. The club went on, for the large part as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, by joining with other groups, it became known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was seen in some organized method on the Thames around the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland funded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV rose to the throne in 1820, it was then known as the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded following a racing fight, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht organisation had been started 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 continuing location of British racing. The organisation at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, also at the rise of George IV. Each member was required to own boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing races for great bets were held, and the social life was superlative. Eventually Royal Yachting Club boats grew in size to over 350 tons.
In North America, yachting was first accomplished with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and went on when the English held dominance. Sailing was largely for leisure and rose to its apogee in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which sailed on the Mediterranean Sea and set a benchmark of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in those waters from the late 19th century. The first enduring American yacht association, the Detroit Boat Club, was formed in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens began the New York Yacht Club aboard his schooner Gimcrack.
Kinds of sailboats
The first sailing yachts took the style of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through the later half of the 19th century. The style of bigger yachts was initially greatly impacted by the success of America, which was designed by George Steers for a association headed 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. Earlier yachts were not designed and crafted in the modern sense, with merely a model used. Not until the second half of the 19th century did what was called naval architecture come about. Not until the 1920s did the employment of the study of aerodynamics do for the structure of sails and rigging what it had already done for hulls.
Because nearly all sailboats had been individually manufactured, there arose a need for handicapping boats as this was before the one-design class boats were designed. Thus, a rating rule was created, which is found in the International Rule, accepted in 1906 and edited in 1919. In modern times, one of the most rapidly blossoming areas in the sailing industry is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are built to single requirements in length, beam, sail area, and other aspects (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing between these boats can be held on an even basis with no handicapping required. A perfect example is the generic International America’s Cup Class adopted for yachts in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
For the time that yachting was an activity largely for the nobility and the affluent, cost was no object, and the size of boats developed, in both length and weight. The ascendancy and desire of smaller boats came in the second 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 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 value of smaller yachts. Thereafter in the 20th century, notably after World War II, smaller racing and pleasure craft became more popular, 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, at which point steam started to replace sail power in public vessels, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were used increasingly in pleasure craft. Large power yachts were developed to a high standard, and long-distance travel turned into a fond pastime of the wealthy. The earliest power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then made way to yachts powered by the fully submerged screw or propeller sort of propulsion. As well as naval and merchant boats, auxiliaries carrying both sail and power were the yacht standard for many years. By the second half of the 20th century, many yachts were still auxiliaries, but the large part were only power yachts containing gasoline or diesel engines.
In the last decade of the 19th century there was a push in the design of more sizeable steam yachts. In particular of these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, that had triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was sailed by a crew of over 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 for World War II.
As bigger and more dependable internal-combustion engines were created, many large boats started using them for power. The creation of the diesel engine, with heavy oil for fuel, was furthered for World War I. From the decade after that, large power-yacht creation flourished, hitting a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. In that point the biggest auxiliary yacht constructed was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The manufacture of big power craft lessened in 1932, and the trend from then was in preference of smaller, less expensive boats. From World War II, many small naval craft were sold to private owners for conversion to yachts. By the late 20th century, yachting had become a internationally beloved activity enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen individually sailing and upkeeping their own small pleasure yachts. The popularity of yachts and owners is increasing steadily, not only in the traditional places by the seacoasts but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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