Yachting and Yacht Clubs
As the Dutch rose to dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the initial yacht was a pleasure craft used first by royalty and then by the burghers for the canals and then in the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing yachts was incidental, arising as private challenges. English yachting began with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his restoration to the English royalty in 1660, the city of Amsterdam presented him with a 20-metre (66-foot) leisure 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), ordered for additional yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and back, on a £100 wager. Yachting became classy with the wealthy and royalty, but after that point the habit did not last.
The first yacht club in the British Isles, the Water Club, was formed at about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard association, and held large naval panoply and formality. The closest thing to a race was the “chase,” for which the “fleet” pursued an imaginary enemy. The club persisted, for the large part as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, when merging with other organisations, it was known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing began in some stipulated fashion on the Thames about the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland founded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV came to the throne in 1820, it was 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 initiated 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 site of British yachting. The society at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, likewise at the accession of George IV. Each member was required to have boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing tests for large bets were held, and the social life was lovely. It came to be that the Royal Yachting Club boats were raised in size to bigger than 350 tons.
In North America, yachting began with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and persisted when the English took dominance. Sailing was largely for pleasure and found its high point in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which traveled on the Mediterranean Sea and set a standard of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in the area 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 aboard his schooner Gimcrack.
Kinds of sailboats
The Early sailing yachts took the style of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through the later half of the 19th century. The style of sizeable yachts was first greatly impacted by the success 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.) was named after its victory at Cowes in 1851. The first yachts were not designed and crafted in a contemporary sense, with merely a model for an outline. Not until the latter half of the 19th century did what was known as 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 it had previously done for hulls.
Because nearly all sailboats had been individually built, there was a need for handicapping boats as this was before the one-design class boats were built. Hence, a rating rule was decreed, which is found in the International Rule, taken on in 1906 and edited in 1919. Today, one of the fastest flourishing areas in sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are manufactured to standard requirements in length, beam, sail area, and other aspects (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing between those boats can be done on an even par with no handicapping necessary. A great example is the standard International America’s Cup Class adopted for racers in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
So long as yachting was an activity largely for the aristocracy and the wealthy, money was no object, and the size of boats grew, in both length and weight. The rise and popularity of smaller craft came in the latter 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) sailed single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray made plain the seaworthiness of less sizeable yachts. Later in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and pleasure boats became more common, down to the dinghy, a preferred 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
Post the decade 1840–50, during which steam began to take the place of sail power in commercial vessels, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were favoured increasingly in personal craft. Bigger power yachts were developed to a high degree, and long-distance sailing was a preferred occupation of the affluent. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; they then made way to yachts powered by the fully submerged screw or propeller type of propulsion. As in the case of naval and merchant vessels, auxiliaries with both sail and power were the yacht standard for several years. By the latter half of the 20th century, several yachts were still auxiliaries, but the majority were exclusively power yachts with gasoline or diesel engines.
During the last decade of the 19th century there was a rise in the manufacture of more sizeable steam yachts. Notably of these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, with triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was sailed by a crew of more than 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 was used in active service during World War II.
As more sizeable and better quality internal-combustion engines were developed, many big yachts started using them for power. The establishment of the diesel engine, with heavy oil for fuel, progressed during World War I. In the decade following, big power-yacht creation blossomed, climaxing in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. During that period the largest auxiliary yacht manufactured was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The building of bigger power craft declined from 1932, and the trend thereafter was in preference of smaller, less pricey yachts. Following World War II, lots of small naval craft were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting had become a globally popular activity enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen personally owning and keeping their own small leisure boats. The number of boats and owners is increasing steadily, not only in the traditional areas along the beach but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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