Yachting and Yacht Clubs

As the Dutch came to dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the initial yacht had been a leisure craft used initially by royalty and secondly by the burghers in the canals and then in the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Yacht racing was incidental, arising as 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 presented him with a 20-metre (66-foot) pleasure 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, sovereign 1685–88), made additional yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and returning, on a £100 wager. Yachting became fashionable with the rich and aristocracy, but after that period the habit 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 group, with large naval panoply and formality. The closest thing to racing was the “chase,” for which the “fleet” pursued an imagined enemy. The club endured, for the large part as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, when conglomerating with other clubs, it became the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).

Yacht racing was first seen in some organized method on the Thames around the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland instigated the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV came to the throne in 1820, it was then named the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded after a racing fight, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht group 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 continued setting of British racing. The club at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, likewise at the rise of George IV. All members were required to have boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing races for high stakes were held, and the club life was superlative. It came to be that the Royal Yachting Club boats were raised 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 gained control. Sailing was mostly for pleasure and reached its high point in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which traveled on the Mediterranean Sea and set a benchmark of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in that area from the late 19th century. The first persisting American yacht society, the Detroit Boat Club, was formed in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens began the New York Yacht Club aboard his schooner Gimcrack.

Kinds of sailboats
The Early sailing yachts were within the lines 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 large yachts was first greatly put upon 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.) found its namesake after its success at Cowes in 1851. Early yachts were not designed and crafted in the modern sense, with just a model used. Not until the second half of the 19th century did what was labeled naval architecture come into being. Not until the 1920s did the use of the science of aerodynamics do for the design of sails and rigging what such science had done earlier for hulls.

Because nearly all sailboats had been individually built, there came a desire for handicapping boats as this was before the one-design class boats were designed. Therefore, a rating rule was decreed, which ended up in the International Rule, taken on in 1906 and edited in 1919. In the present day, one of the most rapidly growing areas in sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are created to single requirements in length, beam, sail area, and other areas (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing such boats can be held on an even par with no handicapping necessary. A perfect example is the uniform International America’s Cup Class adopted for racers in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

As long as yachting belonged largely for the royal and the affluent, expense was no object, and the size of boats grew, in both length and weight. The rise and desire of smaller yachts occurred in the latter half of the 19th century in 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) sailed single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray proved the hardiness of less sizeable craft. Thereafter in the 20th century, particularly after World War II, smaller racing and leisure yachts became more popular, down to the dinghy, a favourite training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, craft 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 began to take the place of sail power in public vessels, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly employed in pleasure vessels. Bigger power yachts were developed to a high degree, and long-distance cruising was a preferred occupation of the rich. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; they then gave rise to boats powered by the fully submerged screw or propeller sort of propulsion. As in the case of naval and merchant craft, auxiliaries with both sail and power were the yacht fashion for a number of years. By the second half of the 20th century, a lot of yachts were still auxiliaries, but the larger part were only power yachts that had gasoline or diesel engines.

From the last decade of the 19th century there was a rise in the manufacture of more sizeable steam yachts. Conspicuous of these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, that had triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was sailed by a crew of at least 150. The Mayflower, commissioned by the United States Navy in 1898, was the official yacht of the president of the United States until 1929 and gave active service for World War II.

As larger and more reliable internal-combustion engines were developed, many large boats started using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, progressed in World War I. During the decade following, large power-yacht building flourished, reaching a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. From that point the biggest auxiliary yacht constructed was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The construction of bigger power boats declined after 1932, and the style thereafter was in preference of smaller, less pricey yachts. After World War II, a lot of small naval craft were bought by private owners for conversion to yachts. By the late 20th century, yachting is a globally popular competition enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen who are actually sailing and upkeeping their own small pleasure craft. The amount of boats and owners is increasing steadily, not only in the traditional areas along the seacoasts but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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