Yachting and Yacht Clubs
As the Dutch came to dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the early yacht became a pleasure 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 was incidental, arising as private challenges. English yachting originated with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his return 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 more yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and returning, on a £100 wager. Yachting was found to be popular for the affluent and aristocracy, but after that time the trend did not last.
The first yacht club in the British Isles, the Water Club, was instigated at about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard group, with large naval panoply and formality. The closest thing to racing boats was the “chase,” in which the “fleet” pursued an imaginary enemy. The club endured, largely as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, by merging with other societies, it was known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was seen in some ordered method on the Thames about the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland instigated the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV ascended to the throne in 1820, it came to be named 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 started 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 perpetual setting of British yacht racing. The society at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, likewise at the rise of George IV. Each member was required to own boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing tests for great bids were held, and the society life was lovely. Eventually Royal Yachting Club boats increased in size to over 350 tons.
In North America, yachting began with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and went on when the English gained power. Sailing was mostly for pleasure and reached its epitome in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which cruised on the Mediterranean Sea and established a minimum of luxury and sophistication for the later yachts in the area from the late 19th century. The first enduring American yacht club, the Detroit Boat Club, was instigated in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens began the New York Yacht Club 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 until the later half of the 19th century. The design of large yachts was initially heavily affected by the win 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.) was named after its success at Cowes in 1851. The first yachts were not designed and crafted in today’s sense, with only a model used. Not until the latter half of the 19th century did what was called naval architecture come into action. Not until the 1920s did the employment of the research of aerodynamics do for the structure of sails and rigging what such study had previously done for hulls.
Because nearly all sailboats had been individually manufactured, there arose a desire for handicapping boats previous to the one-design class boats were designed. Therefore, a rating rule was created, which is found in the International Rule, taken on in 1906 and revised in 1919. In the present day, one of the fastest blossoming areas in the sailing industry is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are built to standard dimensions in length, beam, sail area, and other areas (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing for those boats can be done on an even basis with no handicapping required. A perfect example is the uniform International America’s Cup Class taken on board for yachts in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
For the time that yachting belonged largely for the nobility and the affluent, cost was no problem, and the size of boats grew, in both length and weight. The ascendancy and preference of smaller boats occurred in the later 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 journey around the world (1895–98) led single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray made plain the value of small boats. Later in the 20th century, notably after World War II, smaller racing and leisure yachts became commonplace, down to the dinghy, a favoured 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, at which point steam started to replace sail power in commercial vessels, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly used in leisure boats. Large power yachts were developed to a high standard, and long-distance cruising turned into a preferred activity of the rich. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then made way to boats powered by the completely submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. As well as naval and merchant yachts, auxiliaries possessing both sail and power were the yacht fashion for a number of years. By the later half of the 20th century, many yachts were still auxiliaries, but the majority were exclusively power yachts containing gasoline or diesel engines.
During the last decade of the 19th century there was a boom in the design of large steam yachts. Conspicuous among these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, containing 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 bigger and more dependable internal-combustion engines were produced, many big yachts started using them for power. The creation of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, advanced from World War I. From the decade after, bigger power-yacht manufacture flourished, climaxing in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. In that period the biggest auxiliary yacht built was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The construction of large power boats fell away after 1932, and the style from then was toward smaller, less expensive craft. After World War II, many small naval boats were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting has become a internationally loved sport enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen personally sailing and keeping their own small recreational yachts. The popularity of boats and sailors increased steadily, not only in the traditional locations on the beach but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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