Yachting and Yacht Clubs
As the Dutch found preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht became a pleasure craft used initially by royalty and then by the burghers for the canals and the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing yachts was incidental, borne from private matches. English yachting started with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his return to the English monarchy in 1660, the city of Amsterdam presented him with 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, ruled 1685–88), ordered for other 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 classy for the affluent and nobility, but after that point the habit did not last.
The first yacht association in the British Isles, the Water Club, was instigated in about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard group, and had much naval panoply and rigour. The closest thing to racing boats was the “chase,” in which the “fleet” pursued a fictional enemy. The club endured, for the large part as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, after joining with other societies, it was known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing began in some organized method on the Thames about the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland instigated the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV rose to sovereignty in 1820, it came to be known as 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 group had been formed 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 continuing setting of British racing. The society at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, again at the ascension of George IV. Each member was required to have boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing races for large bids were held, and the club life was wonderful. It came to be that the Royal Yachting Club boats increased in size to over 350 tons.
In North America, yachting began with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and continued when the English had power. Sailing was largely for pleasure and reached its epitome in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which cruised on the Mediterranean Sea and set a standard of luxury and sophistication for the later yachts in the area from the late 19th century. The first continuing American yacht society, 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 Early sailing yachts took the design of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century until the second half of the 19th century. The style of bigger yachts was originally greatly impacted by the win of America, which was drawn by George Steers for a club led 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 crafted in the modern sense, with only a model used. Not until the latter 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 structure of sails and rigging what such science had earlier done for hulls.
Because most of all sailboats had to be individually custom-built, there arose a need for handicapping boats as this was previous to the one-design class boats were designed. Therefore, a rating rule was written, which is found in the International Rule, adopted in 1906 and amended in 1919. In the present day, one of the most rapidly flourishing areas in the sailing industry is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are created to single requirements in length, beam, sail area, and other areas (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing those boats can be done on an even par with no handicapping at all. A perfect example is the uniform International America’s Cup Class adopted for participants in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
For the time that yachting belonged mostly for the aristocracy and the wealthy, money was no object, and the size of boats increased, in both length and weight. The promotion and preference of smaller boats happened in the latter 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) sailed single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray made plain the seaworthiness of less sizeable boats. Thereafter in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and pleasure boats became commonplace, down to the dinghy, a favoured 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
Following the decade 1840–50, during which steam started to take the place of sail power in public boats, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were favoured increasingly in leisure boats. Sizeable power yachts were furthered to a high standard, and long-distance sailing turned into a fond occupation of the rich. The earliest power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then gave way to those powered by the fully submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. As in the case of naval and merchant vessels, auxiliaries with both sail and power were the yacht archetype for a number of years. By the second half of the 20th century, several yachts were still auxiliaries, but the majority were only power yachts containing gasoline or diesel engines.
During the last decade of the 19th century there was a boom in the manufacture of more sizeable steam yachts. Conspicuous among 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 at least 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 gave active service for World War II.
As larger and better quality internal-combustion engines were developed, many big yachts were using them for power. The establishment of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, was furthered during World War I. During the decade following, big power-yacht building flourished, climaxing in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. During that point 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 in 1932, and the trend from then was toward smaller, less pricey boats. 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 internationally loved sport enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen personally sailing and maintaining their own small pleasure boats. The amount of craft and owners is increasing steadily, not only in the traditional locations on the beach but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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