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Yachting and Yacht Clubs

As the Dutch came to preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht became a leisure craft used initially by royalty and later by the burghers on the canals as well as the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing yachts was incidental, coming out of private matches. English yachting started with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his reaffirmation 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 named Mary. Charles and his brother James, the duke of York (James II, ruled 1685 88), made more yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and the same way back, on a 100 bet. Yachting was found to be classy among the rich and nobility, but after that time the habit did not last.

The first yacht association in the British Isles, the Water Club, was formed around about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard organization, and had great naval panoply and gravity. The closest thing to a race was the chase, for which the fleet pursued a fictional enemy. The club persisted, mostly as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, by joining with other societies, it was known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).

Yacht racing was seen in some organized fashion on the Thames around the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland funded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV ascended to sovereignty 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 organisation had been formed at Cowes on the Isle of Wight in 1815, and royal funding made the Solent - the strait between the mainland and the Isle of Wight - the continuing site of British racing. The association at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, likewise at the accession of George IV. All members were required to have boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing tests for large bets were held, and the society life was splendid. Eventually 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 went on when the English took control. Sailing was mostly for pleasure and reached its high point 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 the area from the late 19th century. The first enduring American yacht society, the Detroit Boat Club, was formed in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens founded 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 through to the latter half of the 19th century. The craft of bigger yachts was first heavily put upon by the win of America, which was drawn by George Steers for a club headed by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) had its namesake after its victory at Cowes in 1851. The first yachts were not designed and built in today’s sense, with only a model used. Not until the later half of the 19th century did what was called naval architecture come into being. Not until the 1920s did the use of the study of aerodynamics do for the structure of sails and rigging what it had previously done for hulls.

Because most of all sailboats had been individually manufactured, there came a need for handicapping boats as this was previous to the one-design class boats were made. Thus, a rating rule was decreed, which resulted in the International Rule, taken on in 1906 and edited in 1919. In modern times, one of the fastest flourishing areas in the field of sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are created to the same dimensions in length, beam, sail area, and other aspects (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing those boats can be done on an even playing field 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 primarily for the aristocracy and the rich, money was no object, and the size of boats developed, in both length and weight. The rise and popularity of smaller yachts happened in the second 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 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 less sizeable boats. Following this in the 20th century, notably after World War II, smaller racing and leisure boats became commonplace, down to the dinghy, a popular 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
Post the decade 1840 50, in which steam started to emulate sail power in commercial boats, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly favoured in leisure yachts. Large power yachts were furthered to a high element, and long-distance travel turned into a favoured occupation of the well off. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; these then gave rise to yachts powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. As in the case of naval and merchant vessels, auxiliaries with both sail and power were the yacht fashion for several years. By the later half of the 20th century, a lot of yachts were still auxiliaries, but the majority were solely power yachts with gasoline or diesel engines.

From the last decade of the 19th century there was a push in the design of bigger 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, purchased by the United States Navy in 1898, was the official yacht of the president of the United States until 1929 and was used in active service in World War II.

As larger and better quality internal-combustion engines were produced, many large craft began using them for power. The establishment of the diesel engine, with heavy oil for fuel, advanced in World War I. In the decade following that, big power-yacht manufacture flourished, climaxing in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. In that time the biggest auxiliary yacht constructed was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The building of bigger power yachts lessened in 1932, and the trend thereafter was in preference of smaller, less costly yachts. After World War II, many small naval craft were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting is a internationally popular competition enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen personally manning and upkeeping their own small leisure craft. The number of boats and sailors is increasing steadily, not only in the traditional locations on the seacoasts but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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