Tents and Marquees

As the Dutch rose to dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht had been a pleasure craft used mostly by royalty and then by the burghers in the canals and the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing was incidental, arising as private challenges. 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 sent him a 20-metre (66-foot) leisure 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), built additional yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and returning, on a £100 punt. Yachting became fashionable among the affluent and aristocracy, but after that period the habit 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 held great naval panoply and gravity. The closest thing to a race was the “chase,” for which the “fleet” pursued a fictional enemy. The club went on, largely as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, by joining with other clubs, it became known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).

Yacht racing was first seen in some stipulated fashion on the Thames around the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland funded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV rose to monarchy in 1820, it was called the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded with a racing dispute, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht club 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 perpetual site of British racing. The society at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, again at the rise of George IV. All members were required to possess boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing tests for great bets were held, and the society life was superlative. It came to be that the 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 persisted when the English had dominance. Sailing was largely for pleasure and reached its high point in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which sailed on the Mediterranean Sea and created a minimum of luxury and sophistication for the later yachts in that area from the late 19th century. The first continuing American yacht association, the Detroit Boat Club, was formed in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens instigated the New York Yacht Club while aboard his schooner Gimcrack.

Kinds of sailboats
The first sailing yachts were within the style of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century until the later half of the 19th century. The style of sizeable yachts was initially largely impacted by the win of America, which was drawn by George Steers for a syndicate led 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. Early yachts were not designed and manufactured in a contemporary sense, with just 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 done earlier for hulls.

Because almost all sailboats were individually built, there came a need for handicapping boats as this was previous to the one-design class boats were built. Thus, a rating rule came into being, which is found in the International Rule, adopted in 1906 and revised in 1919. In the present day, one of the rapidly growing areas in the sailing industry is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are created to single dimensions in length, beam, sail area, and other elements (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing these boats can be done on an even par with no handicapping necessary. A great example is the generic International America’s Cup Class adopted for yachts in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

As long as yachting was done mostly for the aristocracy and the rich, cost was no issue, and the size of boats grew, in both length and weight. The ascendancy and desire of smaller boats occurred in the second 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 voyage around the world (1895–98) sailed single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray made plain the hardiness of smaller yachts. Following this in the 20th century, notably after World War II, smaller racing and recreational boats became more common, down to the dinghy, a favoured training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, craft of less than 3 m were setting sail single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.

Kinds of power yachts
After the decade 1840–50, when steam was set to emulate sail power in commercial vessels, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly employed in pleasure vessels. Bigger power yachts were progressed to a high standard, and long-distance sailing turned into a preferred occupation of the well off. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; these then gave way to those powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. Like naval and merchant yachts, auxiliaries with both sail and power were the yacht standard for a number of years. By the latter half of the 20th century, a lot of yachts were still auxiliaries, but the larger part were only power yachts with gasoline or diesel engines.

During the last decade of the 19th century there was a rise in the manufacture of large steam yachts. Notably among 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 at least 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 gave active service during World War II.

As bigger and better quality internal-combustion engines were created, many bigger craft were using them for power. The creation of the diesel engine, using heavy oil for fuel, was furthered during World War I. During the decade following that, bigger power-yacht manufacture flourished, hitting a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. From that point the largest auxiliary yacht constructed was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The building of big power boats fell away from 1932, and the style thereafter was toward smaller, less costly yachts. Following World War II, a lot of small naval boats were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting has become a internationally beloved activity enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen personally sailing and maintaining their own small leisure craft. The amount of craft and sailors increased steadily, not only in the traditional places on the sea but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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