Yachting and Yacht Clubs
As the Dutch found preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht was a leisure craft used mostly by royalty and secondly by the burghers on the canals and then in the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing yachts was incidental, borne from private challenges. English yachting originated with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his reaffirmation to the English royalty 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, ruled 1685–88), made more yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and the same way back, on a £100 bet. Yachting became popular among the wealthy and royalty, but after that period the habit did not last.
The first yacht club 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 great naval panoply and gravity. The closest thing to racing boats was the “chase,” in which the “fleet” pursued a fictional enemy. The club persisted, for the large part as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, by conglomerating with other groups, it became the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was seen in some ordered fashion on the Thames around the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland funded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV ascended to sovereignty in 1820, it was then called the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded after a racing argument, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht society 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 continuing location of British racing. The association at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, again at the ascension of George IV. All members were required to own boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing matches for large bids were held, and the society life was lovely. Ultimately Royal Yachting Club boats increased in size to over 350 tons.
In North America, yachting was first accomplished with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and continued when the English took power. Sailing was mostly for pleasure and found its apogee in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which cruised on the Mediterranean Sea and established a minimum of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in the area from the late 19th century. The first continuing American yacht association, the Detroit Boat Club, was instigated in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens began the New York Yacht Club while aboard his schooner Gimcrack.
Kinds of sailboats
Early sailing yachts followed the design 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 heavily put upon by the win of America, which was created 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. Early yachts were not designed and crafted in the modern sense, with only a model being used. Not until the second half of the 19th century did what was labeled naval architecture come into action. Not until the 1920s did the application 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 was a requirement for handicapping boats as this was previous to the one-design class boats were made. Therefore, a rating rule was written, which resulted in the International Rule, taken on in 1906 and revised in 1919. In modern times, one of the rapidly blossoming areas in the field of sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are manufactured to the same specifications in length, beam, sail area, and other elements (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing such boats can be done on an even keel with no handicapping at all. A great example is the uniform International America’s Cup Class adopted for yachts in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
So long as yachting was an activity mostly for the nobility and the affluent, money was no object, and the size of boats developed, in both length and weight. The promotion and preference of smaller craft occurred in the second 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 journey around the world (1895–98) led single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray proved the value of less sizeable craft. Later in the 20th century, particularly after World War II, smaller racing and pleasure craft became more common, down to the dinghy, a favoured training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, craft of less than 3 m were sailed single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.
Kinds of power yachts
Post the decade 1840–50, in which steam was set to emulate sail power in market craft, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were favoured increasingly in personal boats. Bigger power yachts were furthered to a high element, and long-distance cruising became a favoured occupation of the affluent. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; these then gave rise to yachts powered by the completely submerged screw or propeller sort of propulsion. As well as 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, a lot of yachts were still auxiliaries, but the large part were solely power yachts that had gasoline or diesel engines.
In the last decade of the 19th century there was a push in the manufacture of large 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 more than 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 was used in active service during World War II.
As more sizeable and more dependable internal-combustion engines were developed, many large craft were using them for power. The creation of the diesel engine, using heavy oil for fuel, progressed during World War I. During the decade following, big power-yacht manufacture flourished, climaxing in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. In that point the largest auxiliary yacht manufactured was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The building of large power boats fell away after 1932, and the trend after that was for smaller, less pricey yachts. From World War II, many small naval craft were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. In the late 20th century, yachting has become a globally loved sport enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen who are actually manning and upkeeping their own small recreational yachts. The amount of boats and yachtsmen is increasing steadily, not only in the traditional places on the seacoasts but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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