As the Dutch found preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht had been a pleasure craft used first by royalty and secondly by the burghers in the canals and the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing yachts was incidental, coming out of 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) 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, ruled 1685–88), made additional yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and returning, on a £100 punt. Yachting became popular for the affluent and aristocracy, but after that point the fashion did not last.
The first yacht association in the British Isles, the Water Club, was instigated in about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard association, and had great naval panoply and rigour. The closest thing to racing was the “chase,” for which the “fleet” pursued a fictional enemy. The club persisted, mostly as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, after merging with other groups, it was known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was first seen in some stipulated fashion on the Thames in 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 following a racing argument, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht society 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 setting of British yacht racing. The association at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, again at the ascension of George IV. All members were required to possess boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing races for great bids were held, and the society life was superlative. Eventually Royal Yachting Club boats were raised in size to over 350 tons.
In North America, yachting was first accomplished with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and continued when the English had power. Sailing was largely for fun and rose to its high point in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which traveled on the Mediterranean Sea and established a standard of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in those waters from the late 19th century. The first persisting American yacht group, the Detroit Boat Club, was formed in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens began the New York Yacht Club while on board 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 until the later half of the 19th century. The style of bigger yachts was first largely affected by the success of America, which was drawn by George Steers for a group headed 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. Earlier yachts were not designed and manufactured in the modern sense, with only a model 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 application of the study of aerodynamics do for the structure of sails and rigging what it had already done for hulls.
Because most of all sailboats were individually built, there came a requirement for handicapping boats as this was before the one-design class boats were designed. Hence, a rating rule was decreed, which ended up in the International Rule, adopted in 1906 and revised 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 built to standard specifications in length, beam, sail area, and other aspects (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing such boats can be had on an even par with no handicapping necessary. A perfect example is the generic International America’s Cup Class taken on board for participants in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
For the time that yachting was done mostly for the nobility and the affluent, money was no object, and the size of boats grew, in both length and weight. The promotion and popularity of smaller yachts came 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) sailed single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray demonstrated the value of less sizeable boats. Later in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and recreational 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
Post the decade 1840–50, in which steam was set to replace sail power in public craft, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly used in personal craft. Bigger power yachts were progressed to a high element, and long-distance cruising turned into a favoured occupation of the well off. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then gave rise to yachts powered by the fully submerged screw or propeller type of propulsion. As well as naval and merchant yachts, auxiliaries possessing both sail and power were the yacht archetype for several years. By the second half of the 20th century, a lot of yachts were still auxiliaries, but the majority were solely power yachts that had 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 within 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 gave active service in World War II.
As larger and more dependable internal-combustion engines were created, many bigger yachts began using them for power. The creation of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, progressed during World War I. During the decade following that, big power-yacht creation flourished, hitting a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. From that period the biggest auxiliary yacht built was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The building of bigger power yachts lessened from 1932, and the fashion from then was toward smaller, less costly boats. After World War II, lots of small naval vessels were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. By the late 20th century, yachting is a globally popular activity enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen individually sailing and upkeeping their own small leisure craft. The number of craft and yachtsmen is increasing steadily, not only in the traditional places by the sea but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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