Yachting and Yacht Clubs
As the Dutch rose to preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht was a pleasure craft used first by royalty and secondly by the burghers on the canals and the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing yachts was incidental, borne from private challenges. English yachting started 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 gave him a 20-metre (66-foot) pleasure 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, sovereign 1685–88), built more yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and back, on a £100 punt. Yachting was found to be classy with the affluent and royalty, but after that period the habit did not last.
The first yacht group in the British Isles, the Water Club, was started at about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard group, and had large naval panoply and formality. The closest thing to a race was the “chase,” when the “fleet” pursued a fictional enemy. The club endured, largely as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, when joining with other organisations, it became the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was first seen in some stipulated 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 came to monarchy in 1820, it came to be called 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 formed 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 perpetual site of British yachting. The society 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 great bids were held, and the social life was superlative. Eventually Royal Yachting Club boats were raised in size to bigger than 350 tons.
In North America, yachting began with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and persisted when the English gained power. Sailing was largely for pleasure and reached its high point in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which cruised on the Mediterranean Sea and created a benchmark of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in the area from the late 19th century. The first continuing American yacht society, 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 took the lines of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through to the latter half of the 19th century. The design of large yachts was originally heavily affected by the win of America, which was drawn by George Steers for a syndicate led by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) was named after its victory at Cowes in 1851. Early yachts were not designed and built in today’s sense, with just a model being used. Not until the latter half of the 19th century did what was called naval architecture come about. Not until the 1920s did the employment of the research of aerodynamics do for the structure of sails and rigging what it had earlier done for hulls.
Because nearly all sailboats had to be individually manufactured, there was a desire for handicapping boats previous to the one-design class boats were made. Hence, a rating rule was created, which resulted in the International Rule, accepted in 1906 and edited in 1919. In the present day, one of the rapidly growing areas in the field of sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are created to standard specifications in length, beam, sail area, and other elements (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing for those boats can be had on an even par with no handicapping required. A prime example is the uniform International America’s Cup Class adopted for yachts in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
So long as yachting belonged largely for the royal and the wealthy, expense was no object, and the size of boats increased, in both length and weight. The rise and preference of smaller yachts happened in the later half of the 19th century from 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) captained single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray made plain the seaworthiness of smaller boats. Thereafter in the 20th century, notably after World War II, smaller racing and leisure yachts became more popular, 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, at which point steam started to replace sail power in commercial vessels, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly employed in leisure yachts. Bigger power yachts were furthered to a high degree, and long-distance sailing turned into a favoured pastime of the well off. The earliest power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; they then gave way to yachts powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller type of propulsion. As well as naval and merchant yachts, auxiliaries possessing both sail and power were the yacht archetype for several years. By the latter half of the 20th century, many yachts were still auxiliaries, but the majority were exclusively power yachts that had gasoline or diesel engines.
In the last decade of the 19th century there was a boom in the construction of more sizeable steam yachts. Conspicuous of 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 gave active service in World War II.
As bigger and better quality internal-combustion engines were created, many large boats started using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, with heavy oil for fuel, advanced from World War I. From the decade that followed, bigger power-yacht creation blossomed, reaching a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. From that point the biggest auxiliary yacht built was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The construction of larger power yachts fell away after 1932, and the trend thereafter was in preference of smaller, less costly yachts. Following World War II, many small naval craft were sold to private owners for conversion to yachts. By the late 20th century, yachting is a internationally popular competition enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen personally manning and upkeeping their own small recreational craft. The number of boats and sailors has increased steadily, not only in the traditional places on the sea but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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