As the Dutch found dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht was a leisure craft used mostly by royalty and secondly by the burghers on the canals as well as the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing was incidental, borne from private matches. English yachting began 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 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), built additional yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and returning, on a £100 wager. Yachting rose as popular among the affluent and royalty, but after that period the fashion did not last.
The first yacht group in the British Isles, the Water Club, was instigated in about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard association, with much naval panoply and rigour. The closest thing to racing was the “chase,” in which the “fleet” pursued an imagined enemy. The club went on, for the large part as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, after joining with other groups, it became the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was first seen in some organized fashion on the Thames about the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland funded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV rose to sovereignty in 1820, it was then called the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded following a racing fight, 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 association at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, again at the ascension of George IV. All members were required to have boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing matches for large stakes were held, and the social life was splendid. It came to be that the Royal Yachting Club boats were raised in size to more than 350 tons.
In North America, yachting started with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and went on when the English gained dominance. Sailing was for the most part for fun and found its epitome in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which cruised on the Mediterranean Sea and set a minimum of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in the area from the late 19th century. The first persisting American yacht organisation, the Detroit Boat Club, was started in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens founded the New York Yacht Club aboard his schooner Gimcrack.
Kinds of sailboats
Early sailing yachts took the lines of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through the latter half of the 19th century. The design of large yachts was initially heavily impacted by the victory of America, which was drawn by George Steers for a syndicate started by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) was named after its victory at Cowes in 1851. Early yachts were not designed and manufactured in the modern sense, with just a model used. Not until the second half of the 19th century did what was called naval architecture come about. Not until the 1920s did the application of the research of aerodynamics do for the structure of sails and rigging what it had previously done for hulls.
Because most of all sailboats were individually manufactured, there was a desire for handicapping boats before the one-design class boats were designed. Hence, a rating rule was created, which is found in the International Rule, taken on in 1906 and amended in 1919. In modern times, one of the fastest flourishing areas in sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are manufactured to single requirements in length, beam, sail area, and other aspects (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing these boats can be held on an even playing field with no handicapping necessary. A perfect example is the generic International America’s Cup Class taken on board for yachts in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
So long as yachting was an activity primarily for the nobility and the rich, cost was no issue, and the size of boats developed, in both length and weight. The rise and popularity of smaller craft came 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 trip around the world (1895–98) captained single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray demonstrated the hardiness of small yachts. Later in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and recreational boats became commonplace, 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
After the decade 1840–50, at which point steam started to emulate sail power in market craft, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly employed in leisure craft. Bigger power yachts were progressed to a high degree, and long-distance cruising became a preferred activity of the wealthy. The first power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; these then gave way to those powered by the fully submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. As in the case of naval and merchant craft, auxiliaries with both sail and power were the yacht archetype for many years. By the latter half of the 20th century, many 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 rise in the construction of more sizeable steam yachts. In particular within these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, that had triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was manned by a crew of more than 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 saw active service in World War II.
As bigger and more reliable internal-combustion engines were produced, many big boats began using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, with heavy oil for fuel, was furthered during World War I. In the decade that followed, large power-yacht manufacture blossomed, hitting a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. From that period 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 lessened in 1932, and the fashion thereafter was for smaller, less expensive boats. Following World War II, many small naval craft were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting has become a internationally popular sport enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen who are actually sailing and keeping their own small pleasure craft. The number of yachts and yachtsmen is increasing steadily, not only in the traditional places by the beach but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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Uncategorized | Head Googler September 8, 2010 | 
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