As the Dutch found dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the initial yacht was a pleasure craft used mostly by royalty and secondly by the burghers in the canals as well as the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Yacht racing was incidental, coming out of private challenges. English yachting originated 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 then named Mary. Charles and his brother James, the duke of York (James II, ruled 1685–88), ordered for more yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and back, on a £100 bet. Yachting was found to be classy with the affluent and nobility, but after that period the habit did not last.
The first yacht group in the British Isles, the Water Club, was formed around about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard group, and had large naval panoply and formality. The closest thing to a race was the “chase,” for which the “fleet” pursued an imagined enemy. The club went on, 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 stipulated fashion on the Thames about the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland instigated the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV rose to the throne in 1820, it came to be called the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded with a racing fight, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht association 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 perpetual setting of British yachting. 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 races for high bids were held, and the social life was splendid. Eventually Royal Yachting Club boats were raised in size to over 350 tons.
In North America, yachting began with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and persisted when the English held control. Sailing was largely for fun and rose to its apogee in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which cruised on the Mediterranean Sea and established a standard of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in that area from the late 19th century. The first persisting American yacht organisation, the Detroit Boat Club, was instigated in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens began the New York Yacht Club while aboard his schooner Gimcrack.
Kinds of sailboats
The Early sailing yachts took the lines of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through the later half of the 19th century. The craft of sizeable yachts was originally largely impacted by the success of America, which was designed by George Steers for a group led by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) found its namesake after its win at Cowes in 1851. Early yachts were not designed and manufactured in a contemporary sense, with only a model being used. Not until the latter half of the 19th century did what was called naval architecture come about. Not until the 1920s did the employment of the study of aerodynamics do for the structure of sails and rigging what science had already done for hulls.
Because most of all sailboats had been individually custom-built, there was a need for handicapping boats as this was before the one-design class boats were made. Therefore, a rating rule was created, which resulted in the International Rule, taken on in 1906 and amended in 1919. In the present day, one of the rapidly growing areas in the field of 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 these boats can be had on an even basis with no handicapping necessary. A great example is the generic International America’s Cup Class taken on board for racers in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
So long as yachting was an activity mostly for the aristocracy and the rich, cost was no problem, and the size of boats developed, in both length and weight. The rise and popularity of smaller yachts occurred in the latter 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) sailed single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray proved the hardiness of small boats. Following this in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and leisure boats became more popular, down to the dinghy, a preferred training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, yachts of less than 3 m were traveled in single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.
Kinds of power yachts
Post the decade 1840–50, when steam was set to take the place of sail power in market boats, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly employed in leisure boats. Bigger power yachts were furthered to a high element, and long-distance cruising turned into a preferred pastime of the wealthy. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; they then gave rise to yachts powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. Like naval and merchant vessels, auxiliaries possessing both sail and power were the yacht archetype for a number of years. By the later half of the 20th century, several yachts were still auxiliaries, but the large part were only power yachts with gasoline or diesel engines.
During the last decade of the 19th century there was a rise in the design of more sizeable steam yachts. In particular of these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, that had triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was operated 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 more sizeable and better quality internal-combustion engines were created, many big craft started using them for power. The creation of the diesel engine, using heavy oil for fuel, advanced from World War I. In the decade after that, big power-yacht manufacture flourished, hitting a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. In that period the best auxiliary yacht constructed was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The construction of large power craft fell away from 1932, and the trend from then was toward smaller, less costly craft. After World War II, lots of small naval vessels were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. In the late 20th century, yachting had become a internationally loved activity enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen who are actually sailing and keeping their own small pleasure boats. The popularity of boats and yachtsmen is increasing steadily, not only in the traditional locations by the sea but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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