Yachting and Yacht Clubs
As the Dutch rose to dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht became a leisure craft used initially by royalty and later by the burghers in the canals and the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing yachts was incidental, borne from private games. 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 other yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and returning, on a £100 bet. Yachting was found to be fashionable for the wealthy and royalty, but after that point the fashion did not last.
The first yacht association in the British Isles, the Water Club, was formed at about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard organization, and held great naval panoply and formality. The closest thing to racing was the “chase,” for which the “fleet” pursued an imagined enemy. The club persisted, mostly as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, after joining with other groups, it was known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was seen in some stipulated 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 rose to the throne in 1820, it was then called the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded after a racing argument, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht society had been formed 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 continued location of British yachting. The club at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, again at the accession of George IV. Each member was required to have boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing tests for high bids were held, and the society life was superlative. Ultimately 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 had dominance. Sailing was mostly for fun and reached its epitome in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which cruised on the Mediterranean Sea and created a minimum of luxury and sophistication for the later yachts in those waters from the late 19th century. The first persisting American yacht club, the Detroit Boat Club, was formed in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens began the New York Yacht Club while aboard his schooner Gimcrack.
Kinds of sailboats
Early sailing yachts followed the design of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through to the second half of the 19th century. The style of sizeable yachts was originally largely impacted by the win of America, which was created by George Steers for a syndicate started 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 a contemporary sense, with merely a model being used. Not until the second half of the 19th century did what was known as naval architecture come about. Not until the 1920s did the use of the science of aerodynamics do for the structure of sails and rigging what it had previously done for hulls.
Because most of all sailboats were individually built, there was a desire for handicapping boats as this was before the one-design class boats were built. Thus, a rating rule was created, which resulted in the International Rule, taken on in 1906 and edited in 1919. Today, 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 built to the same requirements in length, beam, sail area, and other aspects (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing for those boats can be held on an even basis with no handicapping at all. A prime example is the uniform International America’s Cup Class taken on for participants in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
For the time that yachting was an activity primarily for the royal and the wealthy, expense was no object, and the size of boats increased, 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 trip around the world (1895–98) led single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray demonstrated the value of smaller yachts. Later in the 20th century, particularly after World War II, smaller racing and leisure yachts became commonplace, down to the dinghy, a preferred training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, craft of less than 3 m were traveled in single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.
Kinds of power yachts
Following the decade 1840–50, during which steam began to replace sail power in market craft, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly used in leisure vessels. Bigger power yachts were furthered to a high degree, and long-distance sailing turned into a favoured occupation of the well off. The earliest power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; these then gave rise to boats powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. As well as naval and merchant vessels, auxiliaries carrying both sail and power were the yacht archetype for many years. By the second half of the 20th century, many yachts were still auxiliaries, but the large part were only power yachts that had gasoline or diesel engines.
During the last decade of the 19th century there was a rise in the construction of large steam yachts. Notably within these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, containing triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was operated 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 saw active service for World War II.
As larger and better quality internal-combustion engines were created, many big boats started using them for power. The creation of the diesel engine, with heavy oil for fuel, was furthered from World War I. From the decade that followed, large power-yacht building flourished, hitting a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. From that time the largest auxiliary yacht built was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The building of large power boats fell away in 1932, and the trend after that was for smaller, less pricey yachts. After World War II, lots of small naval boats were sold to private owners for conversion to yachts. In the late 20th century, yachting had become a widespread beloved activity enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen who are actually manning and maintaining their own small leisure craft. The popularity of boats and owners increased steadily, not only in the traditional areas along the sea but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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