Yachting and Yacht Clubs

As the Dutch rose to dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the initial yacht was a pleasure craft used mostly by royalty and then by the burghers on the canals as well as 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, sovereign 1685–88), made additional yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and the same way back, on a £100 wager. Yachting was found to be fashionable with the rich and royalty, but after that period the fashion did not last.

The first yacht club in the British Isles, the Water Club, was started around about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard organization, with much naval panoply and rigour. The closest thing to racing boats was the “chase,” for which the “fleet” pursued a fictional enemy. The club endured, mostly as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, by merging with other societies, it was known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).

Yacht racing was seen in some organized manner on the Thames in the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland funded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV came to monarchy in 1820, it was then called 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 sponsorship made the Solent - the strait between the mainland and the Isle of Wight - the continuing location of British racing. The society at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, also at the ascension of George IV. Each member was required to possess boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing matches for large bets were held, and the society life was wonderful. Ultimately Royal Yachting Club boats increased in size to over 350 tons.

In North America, yachting began with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and continued when the English took power. Sailing was for the most part for fun 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 those waters from the late 19th century. The first enduring American yacht organisation, the Detroit Boat Club, was formed in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens began the New York Yacht Club while on board his schooner Gimcrack.

Kinds of sailboats
Early sailing yachts took the design of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century until the later half of the 19th century. The style of large yachts was initially greatly put upon by the success of America, which was created by George Steers for a association headed 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 built in a contemporary sense, with only a model used. Not until the later half of the 19th century did what was known as naval architecture come into action. Not until the 1920s did the use of the study of aerodynamics do for the craft of sails and rigging what it had previously done for hulls.

Because nearly all sailboats had to be individually custom-built, there was a requirement for handicapping boats previous to the one-design class boats were built. Thus, a rating rule was created, which is found in the International Rule, taken on in 1906 and edited in 1919. Today, one of the rapidly blossoming areas in the sailing industry 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 these boats can be held on an even par with no handicapping required. A perfect example is the standard International America’s Cup Class taken on board for yachts in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

For the time that yachting was an activity mostly for the nobility and the rich, expense was no object, and the size of boats developed, in both length and weight. The rise and desire of smaller yachts came in the later 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 trip around the world (1895–98) captained single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray proved the seaworthiness of less sizeable craft. Following this in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and recreational craft became more popular, down to the dinghy, a favourite training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, yachts 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 started to replace sail power in public vessels, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were employed more and more in leisure vessels. Bigger power yachts were progressed to a high degree, and long-distance travel turned into a favoured activity of the rich. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then gave rise to yachts powered by the completely submerged screw or propeller sort of propulsion. As in the case of naval and merchant vessels, auxiliaries possessing both sail and power were the yacht archetype for several years. By the later half of the 20th century, several yachts were still auxiliaries, but the majority were only power yachts that had gasoline or diesel engines.

In the last decade of the 19th century there was a boom 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 operated by a crew of more than 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 during World War II.

As bigger and better quality internal-combustion engines were developed, many large craft started using them for power. The establishment of the diesel engine, using heavy oil for fuel, advanced for World War I. From the decade after that, bigger power-yacht manufacture blossomed, climaxing in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. During that time the largest auxiliary yacht built was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The building of large power boats declined in 1932, and the fashion after that was for smaller, less costly boats. After World War II, lots of small naval boats were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. By the late 20th century, yachting is a widespread popular sport enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen individually owning and maintaining their own small recreational yachts. The number of yachts and yachtsmen has increased steadily, not only in the traditional areas by the sea but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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