Yachting and Yacht Clubs
As the Dutch came to dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the initial yacht had been a leisure craft used mostly by royalty and then by the burghers on the canals as well as the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing was incidental, coming out of private challenges. English yachting began 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 sent 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, reigned 1685–88), built other yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and returning, on a £100 bet. Yachting rose as fashionable among the affluent and nobility, but after that time the habit did not last.
The first yacht club in the British Isles, the Water Club, was started at about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard association, and held great naval panoply and gravity. The closest thing to racing boats was the “chase,” in which the “fleet” pursued a fictional enemy. The club endured, largely as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, when merging with other organisations, it became known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was seen in some organized fashion 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 monarchy in 1820, it was then named the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded following 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 funding made the Solent - the strait between the mainland and the Isle of Wight - the perpetual site of British yacht racing. The association at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, again at the accession of George IV. Each member was required to own boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing races for high 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 had power. Sailing was for the most part for fun and rose to its epitome in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which sailed on the Mediterranean Sea and set a minimum of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in the area from the late 19th century. The first enduring American yacht society, the Detroit Boat Club, was instigated in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens began the New York Yacht Club while on board his schooner Gimcrack.
Kinds of sailboats
Early sailing yachts followed the style of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through to the later half of the 19th century. The style of sizeable yachts was originally largely affected by the win of America, which was designed by George Steers for a group 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. Early yachts were not designed and crafted in a contemporary sense, with only a model for an outline. 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 science of aerodynamics do for the structure of sails and rigging what it had already done for hulls.
Because most of all sailboats had been individually manufactured, there arose a desire for handicapping boats as this was before the one-design class boats were built. Therefore, a rating rule came into being, which ended up in the International Rule, accepted in 1906 and edited in 1919. In modern times, one of the fastest flourishing areas in the field of sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are manufactured to standard specifications in length, beam, sail area, and other areas (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing for such boats can be done on an even par with no handicapping at all. A great example is the standard International America’s Cup Class adopted for yachts in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
So long as yachting was an activity primarily for the royal and the affluent, expense was no issue, and the size of boats increased, in both length and weight. The rise and preference of smaller yachts came in the latter 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 hardiness of smaller boats. Following this in the 20th century, particularly after World War II, smaller racing and leisure yachts became more common, down to the dinghy, a favourite training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, yachts of less than 3 m were traveled in single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.
Kinds of power yachts
Post the decade 1840–50, at which point steam started to take the place of sail power in public craft, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly used in leisure vessels. Large power yachts were furthered to a high standard, and long-distance sailing was a favoured occupation of the affluent. The earliest power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; they then made way to yachts powered by the completely submerged screw or propeller type of propulsion. As in the case of naval and merchant yachts, auxiliaries possessing both sail and power were the yacht archetype for a number of years. By the latter half of the 20th century, many yachts were still auxiliaries, but the large part were exclusively power yachts with gasoline or diesel engines.
In the last decade of the 19th century there was a boom in the design of more sizeable steam yachts. Notably within these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, that had triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was manned 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 more sizeable and better quality internal-combustion engines were produced, many large boats were using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, with heavy oil for fuel, was furthered during World War I. From the decade that followed, bigger power-yacht manufacture blossomed, climaxing in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. During that time the largest auxiliary yacht manufactured was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The construction of big power yachts lessened in 1932, and the style from then was in preference of smaller, less costly craft. From World War II, lots of small naval craft were bought by private owners for conversion to yachts. In the late 20th century, yachting is a widespread beloved activity enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen personally sailing and upkeeping their own small recreational boats. The amount of craft and owners has increased steadily, not only in the traditional areas along the sea but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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