Yachting and Yacht Clubs
As the Dutch rose to preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the initial yacht was a leisure craft used initially by royalty and then by the burghers for 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 restoration to the English throne in 1660, the city of Amsterdam presented him with a 20-metre (66-foot) pleasure 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 rose as popular among the affluent and royalty, but after that period the trend 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 great naval panoply and gravity. The closest thing to racing was the “chase,” in which the “fleet” pursued an imaginary enemy. The club endured, mostly as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, when merging with other organisations, it was known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was seen in some stipulated manner 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 sovereignty in 1820, it came to be known as 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 club had been started 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 perpetual site of British yacht racing. The organisation at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, also at the rise of George IV. Every member was required to own boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing tests for high bids were held, and the society life was splendid. Eventually Royal Yachting Club boats increased in size to over 350 tons.
In North America, yachting started with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and continued when the English held power. Sailing was for the most part for fun and found its high point in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which sailed on the Mediterranean Sea and established a minimum of luxury and sophistication for the later yachts in the 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 began the New York Yacht Club while aboard his schooner Gimcrack.
Kinds of sailboats
The first sailing yachts were within the design of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through to the later half of the 19th century. The style of sizeable yachts was first heavily impacted by the success of America, which was designed 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 win at Cowes in 1851. Early yachts were not designed and built in today’s sense, with just a model 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 science of aerodynamics do for the design of sails and rigging what it had earlier done for hulls.
Because most of all sailboats had to be individually built, there came a desire for handicapping boats previous to the one-design class boats were made. Hence, a rating rule was written, which is found in the International Rule, taken on in 1906 and amended in 1919. In modern times, one of the most rapidly blossoming areas in sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are built to standard specifications in length, beam, sail area, and other elements (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 required. A prime example is the uniform International America’s Cup Class adopted for participants in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
So long as yachting was done primarily for the nobility and the rich, expense was no problem, and the size of boats increased, in both length and weight. The ascendancy and desire of smaller craft came in the second 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) led single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray demonstrated the seaworthiness of less sizeable boats. Later in the 20th century, notably after World War II, smaller racing and recreational boats became commonplace, down to the dinghy, a favoured training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, boats of less than 3 m were sailed single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.
Kinds of power yachts
Following the decade 1840–50, in which steam started to replace sail power in public craft, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly used in pleasure boats. Sizeable power yachts were progressed to a high element, and long-distance travel became a fond activity of the well off. The first power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; these then gave way to those powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller type of propulsion. As well as naval and merchant vessels, auxiliaries possessing both sail and power were the yacht fashion for several years. By the latter half of the 20th century, a lot of yachts were still auxiliaries, but the large part were only power yachts that had gasoline or diesel engines.
From the last decade of the 19th century there was a boom in the construction of bigger steam yachts. Notably of these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, with triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was sailed by a crew of more than 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 more sizeable and better quality internal-combustion engines were produced, many big yachts were using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, progressed from World War I. During the decade after, big power-yacht building flourished, reaching a climax 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 manufacture of bigger power craft lessened in 1932, and the fashion from then was for smaller, less costly yachts. Following World War II, lots of small naval boats were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. In the late 20th century, yachting is a widespread popular competition enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen who are actually sailing and maintaining their own small pleasure yachts. The popularity of boats and owners increased steadily, not only in the traditional places along the sea but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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