Yachting and Yacht Clubs
As the Dutch rose to dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the early yacht had been a leisure craft used mostly by royalty and secondly by the burghers on the canals and then in the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Yacht racing was incidental, coming out of private challenges. English yachting started with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his reaffirmation to the English royalty in 1660, the city of Amsterdam sent him a 20-metre (66-foot) pleasure boat with a beam (maximum width) of 5.6 m (18 feet), which he called 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 the same way back, on a £100 punt. Yachting rose as classy among the wealthy and nobility, but after that point the trend did not last.
The first yacht club in the British Isles, the Water Club, was started around about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard association, and held great naval panoply and rigour. The closest thing to racing boats was the “chase,” when the “fleet” pursued an imagined enemy. The club persisted, largely as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, by joining with other groups, it became known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing began in some stipulated manner on the Thames in the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland instigated the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV came to the throne 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 group had been initiated 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 perpetual site of British yachting. The association at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, again at the rise of George IV. Each member was required to own boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing matches for large bets were held, and the club life was splendid. Eventually 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 held control. Sailing was mostly for fun and reached its apogee in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which sailed on the Mediterranean Sea and set a minimum of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in that area from the late 19th century. The first enduring American yacht group, the Detroit Boat Club, was instigated in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens instigated the New York Yacht Club aboard his schooner Gimcrack.
Kinds of sailboats
The first sailing yachts followed the design 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 originally greatly impacted by the success of America, which was created by George Steers for a club 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 built in a contemporary sense, with just a model used. Not until the second 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 science had previously done for hulls.
Because almost all sailboats had been individually manufactured, there was a requirement for handicapping boats as this was previous to the one-design class boats were built. Hence, a rating rule came into being, which resulted in the International Rule, adopted in 1906 and edited in 1919. In the present day, one of the fastest growing areas in 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 areas (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing those boats can be done on an even basis with no handicapping required. A great example is the generic International America’s Cup Class adopted for participants in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
For the time that yachting was done largely for the royal and the wealthy, money was no issue, and the size of boats developed, in both length and weight. The promotion and preference of smaller boats occurred in the later 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 made plain the seaworthiness of less sizeable boats. Following this in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and recreational yachts became commonplace, down to the dinghy, a favoured training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, boats of less than 3 m were setting sail single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.
Kinds of power yachts
After the decade 1840–50, at which point steam began to emulate sail power in public boats, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were favoured increasingly in leisure boats. Bigger power yachts were developed to a high degree, and long-distance sailing was a favoured pastime of the rich. The earliest power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; they then gave way to yachts powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. As well as naval and merchant craft, auxiliaries with both sail and power were the yacht fashion for many years. By the latter half of the 20th century, a lot of yachts were still auxiliaries, but the majority were solely power yachts containing gasoline or diesel engines.
During the last decade of the 19th century there was a rise in the construction of bigger 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 sailed by a crew of over 150. The Mayflower, bought 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 better quality internal-combustion engines were developed, many bigger yachts began using them for power. The establishment of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, progressed for World War I. In the decade after that, big power-yacht building blossomed, reaching a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. During that point the largest auxiliary yacht built was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The building of larger power craft fell away in 1932, and the fashion after that was for smaller, less pricey boats. After World War II, a lot of small naval craft were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting is a widespread popular activity enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen individually manning and upkeeping their own small recreational boats. The amount of craft and yachtsmen increased steadily, not only in the traditional locations on the beach but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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