Yachting and Yacht Clubs
As the Dutch came to preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht had been a leisure craft used mostly by royalty and later by the burghers on the canals and then in the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing was incidental, arising as private challenges. English yachting originated 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 presented him with 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), made additional yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and back, on a £100 bet. Yachting was found to be popular with the rich and royalty, but after that period the trend 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, with much naval panoply and formality. The closest thing to a race was the “chase,” for which the “fleet” pursued an imaginary enemy. The club went on, mostly as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, by merging with other groups, it became the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was first seen in some ordered method on the Thames around the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland founded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV ascended to monarchy in 1820, it was 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 society had been initiated 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 continued location of British racing. The society at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, likewise at the accession of George IV. All members were required to own boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing races for great bets were held, and the social life was splendid. Eventually Royal Yachting Club boats increased in size to bigger than 350 tons.
In North America, yachting was first accomplished with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and persisted when the English held power. Sailing was mostly for leisure and found its high point in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which cruised on the Mediterranean Sea and set a minimum of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in that area from the late 19th century. The first continuing American yacht club, 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 design of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through the second half of the 19th century. The design of sizeable yachts was initially largely impacted 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 victory at Cowes in 1851. Early yachts were not designed and built in today’s sense, with just a model used. Not until the later half of the 19th century did what was labeled naval architecture come into being. Not until the 1920s did the application of the science of aerodynamics do for the craft of sails and rigging what science had already done for hulls.
Because nearly all sailboats had to be individually built, there came a requirement for handicapping boats previous to the one-design class boats were built. Therefore, a rating rule was written, which resulted in the International Rule, accepted in 1906 and revised in 1919. In the present day, one of the fastest growing areas in sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are built to single dimensions in length, beam, sail area, and other aspects (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing for those boats can be held on an even playing field with no handicapping necessary. A perfect example is the uniform International America’s Cup Class taken on for participants in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
So long as yachting was an activity largely for the royal and the wealthy, expense was no issue, and the size of boats developed, in both length and weight. The promotion 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 journey around the world (1895–98) sailed single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray proved the value of less sizeable craft. Thereafter in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and pleasure boats 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 sailed single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.
Kinds of power yachts
Following the decade 1840–50, at which point steam began to replace sail power in public craft, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were used increasingly in pleasure boats. Sizeable power yachts were progressed to a high standard, and long-distance travel turned into a preferred pastime of the rich. The earliest power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; these then made way to those powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller sort of propulsion. As in the case of naval and merchant boats, auxiliaries carrying both sail and power were the yacht fashion for many years. By the latter half of the 20th century, a lot of 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 boom in the construction of bigger steam yachts. In particular 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 more than 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 saw active service during World War II.
As bigger and more reliable internal-combustion engines were developed, many large boats were using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, using heavy oil for fuel, progressed for World War I. From the decade after that, big power-yacht creation blossomed, climaxing in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. During that period the biggest auxiliary yacht constructed was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The building of big power craft fell away in 1932, and the fashion after that was in preference of smaller, less pricey boats. From World War II, a lot of small naval craft were sold to private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting has become a internationally loved competition enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen individually sailing and maintaining their own small pleasure boats. The amount of craft and sailors is increasing steadily, not only in the traditional places along the beach but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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