Yachting and Yacht Clubs

As the Dutch found dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht was a pleasure craft used mostly by royalty and then by the burghers on the canals and the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Yacht 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) 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, ruled 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 became fashionable with the rich and aristocracy, but after that time the trend did not last.

The first yacht club in the British Isles, the Water Club, was formed at about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard association, and held large naval panoply and formality. The closest thing to racing boats was the “chase,” in which the “fleet” pursued an imaginary enemy. The club endured, for the large part as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, by merging with other societies, 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 funded 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 with a racing fight, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht society 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 continued location of British racing. The club at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, likewise at the ascension of George IV. Each member was required to have boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing races for high bets were held, and the society life was wonderful. Eventually Royal Yachting Club boats increased in size to more than 350 tons.

In North America, yachting began with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and continued when the English took dominance. Sailing was mostly for pleasure and rose to its apogee in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which sailed on the Mediterranean Sea and created a standard of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in that area from the late 19th century. The first enduring American yacht association, the Detroit Boat Club, was started in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens instigated the New York Yacht Club while aboard his schooner Gimcrack.

Kinds of sailboats
The first sailing yachts took the style of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century until the later half of the 19th century. The design of large yachts was first greatly affected by the success of America, which was designed by George Steers for a syndicate started by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) found its namesake after its victory at Cowes in 1851. Early yachts were not designed and manufactured in today’s 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 research of aerodynamics do for the design of sails and rigging what it had previously done for hulls.

Because almost all sailboats had to be individually manufactured, there was a desire for handicapping boats previous to the one-design class boats were designed. Thus, a rating rule was created, which resulted in the International Rule, adopted in 1906 and amended in 1919. Today, one of the fastest blossoming areas in the sailing industry is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are manufactured to the same requirements in length, beam, sail area, and other aspects (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing those boats can be had on an even playing field with no handicapping required. A prime example is the generic International America’s Cup Class taken on board for yachts in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

For the time that yachting was done mostly for the nobility and the wealthy, money was no object, and the size of boats developed, in both length and weight. The rise and preference of smaller craft 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 voyage around the world (1895–98) captained single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray made plain the value of smaller craft. Following this in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and recreational yachts 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 setting sail single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.

Kinds of power yachts
Post the decade 1840–50, at which point steam began to take the place of sail power in market boats, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were employed more and more in pleasure vessels. Sizeable power yachts were furthered to a high element, and long-distance travel turned into a favoured occupation of the rich. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; these then gave way to those powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller type of propulsion. As in the case of naval and merchant boats, auxiliaries with both sail and power were the yacht archetype for a number of years. By the latter half of the 20th century, several 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 push in the design of large steam yachts. Notably among these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, with triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was manned by a crew of at least 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 during World War II.

As bigger and more reliable internal-combustion engines were created, many bigger boats began using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, using heavy oil for fuel, progressed in World War I. In the decade following, big power-yacht building grew, climaxing in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. From that period the biggest auxiliary yacht manufactured was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The building of bigger power boats declined in 1932, and the style from then was toward smaller, less costly craft. Following World War II, a lot of small naval craft were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. In the late 20th century, yachting is a globally popular competition enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen individually manning and maintaining their own small pleasure boats. The amount of boats and owners increased steadily, not only in the traditional areas along the seacoasts but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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