Yachting and Yacht Clubs
As the Dutch came to dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht became a pleasure craft used initially by royalty and secondly by the burghers in the canals as well as the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing was incidental, borne from private games. English yachting started 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 presented him with a 20-metre (66-foot) pleasure boat with a beam (maximum width) of 5.6 m (18 feet), which he 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 punt. Yachting was found to be classy with the affluent and royalty, but after that period the habit did not last.
The first yacht club in the British Isles, the Water Club, was formed around 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 a fictional enemy. The club endured, mostly as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, after joining with other groups, it became known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was seen in some organized fashion on the Thames about the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland funded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV came to monarchy in 1820, it came to be known as 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 association 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 continuing setting of British racing. The society 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 high stakes were held, and the social life was splendid. Ultimately Royal Yachting Club boats grew 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 gained dominance. Sailing was largely for leisure and found its epitome in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which traveled on the Mediterranean Sea and set a minimum of luxury and sophistication for the later yachts in the area from the late 19th century. The first enduring American yacht group, the Detroit Boat Club, was formed in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens founded the New York Yacht Club while 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 through the second half of the 19th century. The style of large yachts was initially heavily affected by the victory of America, which was drawn by George Steers for a association 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. Earlier yachts were not designed and built in a contemporary sense, with merely a model for an outline. Not until the second half of the 19th century did what was labeled naval architecture come into being. Not until the 1920s did the use of the research of aerodynamics do for the craft of sails and rigging what such science had already done for hulls.
Because nearly all sailboats had been individually custom-built, there came 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, accepted in 1906 and amended in 1919. In the present day, one of the rapidly flourishing areas in the field of sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are manufactured to the same requirements in length, beam, sail area, and other areas (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing for such boats can be held on an even playing field with no handicapping at all. A prime example is the standard International America’s Cup Class adopted for racers in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
As long as yachting belonged largely for the aristocracy and the affluent, expense was no object, and the size of boats grew, in both length and weight. The ascendancy and preference of smaller craft came in the second 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 trip around the world (1895–98) captained single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray demonstrated the seaworthiness of smaller boats. Later in the 20th century, notably after World War II, smaller racing and pleasure craft became commonplace, down to the dinghy, a popular 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
After the decade 1840–50, during which steam started to replace sail power in public vessels, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were employed more and more in pleasure yachts. Bigger power yachts were developed to a high standard, and long-distance travel turned into a favoured activity of the rich. The first power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; these then made way to those powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller sort of propulsion. As well as naval and merchant boats, auxiliaries carrying both sail and power were the yacht standard for a number of years. By the later half of the 20th century, several yachts were still auxiliaries, but the larger part were solely power yachts that had gasoline or diesel engines.
In the last decade of the 19th century there was a push in the manufacture of more sizeable steam yachts. Conspicuous of these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, with triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was manned 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 in World War II.
As bigger and better quality internal-combustion engines were created, many big craft were using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, was furthered from World War I. From the decade after that, bigger power-yacht manufacture blossomed, reaching a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. In that time the largest auxiliary yacht constructed was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The building of big power yachts fell away in 1932, and the style from then was in preference of smaller, less pricey yachts. Following World War II, a lot of small naval vessels were bought by private owners for conversion to yachts. In the late 20th century, yachting had become a globally popular sport enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen individually owning and keeping their own small pleasure craft. The popularity of craft and yachtsmen has increased steadily, not only in the traditional places on the sea but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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