Yachting and Yacht Clubs

As the Dutch came to dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the initial yacht was a pleasure craft used first by royalty and later by the burghers on the canals and the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Yacht racing was incidental, borne from private games. English yachting originated with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his return to the English royalty in 1660, the city of Amsterdam gave 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), made more yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and back, on a £100 wager. Yachting was found to be popular with the wealthy and royalty, but after that period the trend did not last.

The first yacht club in the British Isles, the Water Club, was formed in about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard association, with much naval panoply and formality. The closest thing to racing boats was the “chase,” in which the “fleet” pursued a fictional enemy. The club persisted, largely as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, when merging with other organisations, it became known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).

Yacht racing began in some organized fashion on the Thames about the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland founded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV ascended to sovereignty in 1820, it was 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 organisation had been initiated 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 location of British yachting. The club at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, likewise at the rise of George IV. Every member was required to possess boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing tests for large bids were held, and the club life was splendid. It came to be that the Royal Yachting Club boats grew in size to more than 350 tons.

In North America, yachting started with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and persisted when the English took dominance. Sailing was mostly for pleasure and rose to its apogee in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which cruised on the Mediterranean Sea and set a standard of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in those waters from the late 19th century. The first continuing American yacht club, the Detroit Boat Club, was formed in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens founded the New York Yacht Club aboard his schooner Gimcrack.

Kinds of sailboats
Early sailing yachts were within the lines of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century until the second half of the 19th century. The style of large yachts was initially greatly affected 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.) was named after its success at Cowes in 1851. Early yachts were not designed and built in the modern sense, with only a model used. Not until the latter half of the 19th century did what was labeled naval architecture come into being. Not until the 1920s did the application of the science of aerodynamics do for the craft of sails and rigging what such study had done earlier for hulls.

Because almost all sailboats were individually manufactured, there was a requirement for handicapping boats previous to the one-design class boats were built. Hence, a rating rule was created, which ended up in the International Rule, adopted in 1906 and revised in 1919. Today, one of the most rapidly blossoming areas in sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are created to standard requirements in length, beam, sail area, and other areas (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing between those boats can be held on an even playing field with no handicapping at all. A prime example is the standard International America’s Cup Class taken on for participants in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

So long as yachting was an activity mostly for the nobility and the rich, money was no object, and the size of boats grew, in both length and weight. The ascendancy and popularity of smaller yachts occurred 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 demonstrated the value of small boats. Later in the 20th century, particularly after World War II, smaller racing and pleasure yachts became more common, down to the dinghy, a preferred 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, during which steam was set to replace sail power in market boats, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were employed more and more in personal boats. Large power yachts were furthered to a high element, and long-distance travel became a preferred activity of the wealthy. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then gave way to yachts powered by the completely submerged screw or propeller type of propulsion. Like naval and merchant yachts, auxiliaries with both sail and power were the yacht archetype for a number of years. By the latter half of the 20th century, many yachts were still auxiliaries, but the larger part were exclusively power yachts with gasoline or diesel engines.

In the last decade of the 19th century there was a rise in the construction of large steam yachts. In particular within 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 more sizeable and more reliable internal-combustion engines were produced, many bigger craft began using them for power. The establishment of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, advanced for World War I. From the decade following, bigger power-yacht creation grew, climaxing in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. In that point the biggest auxiliary yacht built was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The manufacture of large power boats fell away after 1932, and the trend after that was in preference of smaller, less costly craft. After World War II, lots of small naval craft were bought by private owners for conversion to yachts. In the late 20th century, yachting has become a widespread popular competition enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen who are actually manning and maintaining their own small recreational craft. The amount of craft and sailors increased steadily, not only in the traditional places on the sea but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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