Yachting and Yacht Clubs
As the Dutch found dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the early yacht was a leisure craft used initially by royalty and later by the burghers in the canals and then in the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing was incidental, borne from private matches. English yachting originated with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his restoration 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 then named Mary. Charles and his brother James, the duke of York (James II, reigned 1685–88), ordered for more yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and the same way back, on a £100 punt. Yachting rose as fashionable for the rich and royalty, but after that period the fashion did not last.
The first yacht group in the British Isles, the Water Club, was instigated around about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard group, with much naval panoply and formality. The closest thing to racing boats was the “chase,” when the “fleet” pursued an imagined enemy. The club endured, for the large part as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, by conglomerating with other groups, 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 founded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV rose to monarchy in 1820, it was named the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded with a racing dispute, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht organisation had been started 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 continuing setting of British yacht racing. The association 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 tests for large bets were held, and the society life was superlative. It came to be that the 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 control. Sailing was for the most part for fun and rose to its epitome in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which traveled on the Mediterranean Sea and set a standard of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in the area from the late 19th century. The first continuing American yacht organisation, the Detroit Boat Club, was started in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens began the New York Yacht Club aboard his schooner Gimcrack.
Kinds of sailboats
The first sailing yachts were within the lines of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through the later half of the 19th century. The design of sizeable yachts was initially greatly put upon by the success of America, which was created by George Steers for a syndicate headed by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) found its namesake after its success at Cowes in 1851. The first yachts were not designed and built in today’s sense, with merely a model used. Not until the later half of the 19th century did what was called naval architecture come into being. Not until the 1920s did the use of the research of aerodynamics do for the structure of sails and rigging what it had done earlier for hulls.
Because most of all sailboats had been individually manufactured, there arose a need for handicapping boats previous to the one-design class boats were built. Thus, a rating rule was decreed, which resulted in the International Rule, taken on in 1906 and edited in 1919. In the present day, one of the rapidly blossoming areas in sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are manufactured to the same dimensions in length, beam, sail area, and other aspects (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing between such boats can be done on an even playing field with no handicapping at all. A great example is the generic International America’s Cup Class taken on board for yachts in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
So long as yachting belonged largely for the royal and the wealthy, cost was no object, and the size of boats grew, in both length and weight. The ascendancy and popularity of smaller yachts occurred 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) captained single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray made plain the hardiness of less sizeable boats. Following this in the 20th century, notably after World War II, smaller racing and leisure craft became more popular, down to the dinghy, a popular training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, boats of less than 3 m were traveled in single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.
Kinds of power yachts
Post the decade 1840–50, in which steam was set to take the place of sail power in commercial vessels, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were used increasingly in pleasure boats. Bigger power yachts were progressed to a high standard, and long-distance cruising became a preferred occupation of the well off. The first power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then gave way to boats powered by the completely 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 standard for several years. By the later half of the 20th century, many 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 construction of more sizeable steam yachts. In particular of these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, with triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was operated by a crew of at least 150. The Mayflower, bought 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 bigger and more reliable internal-combustion engines were produced, many big boats started using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, using heavy oil for fuel, advanced for World War I. During the decade after, large power-yacht creation grew, climaxing in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. In that time the biggest auxiliary yacht built was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The manufacture of larger power yachts fell away in 1932, and the trend from then was for smaller, less expensive craft. After World War II, many small naval craft were sold to private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting had become a internationally beloved activity enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen individually manning and upkeeping their own small pleasure craft. The number of yachts and sailors is increasing steadily, not only in the traditional places along the sea but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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