Yachting and Yacht Clubs
As the Dutch rose to dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the initial yacht had been a pleasure craft used mostly by royalty and secondly by the burghers in the canals and the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing yachts was incidental, borne from 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) 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, reigned 1685–88), ordered for other 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 wealthy and nobility, but after that period the trend did not last.
The first yacht association in the British Isles, the Water Club, was instigated at about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard association, and held great naval panoply and rigour. The closest thing to a race was the “chase,” in which the “fleet” pursued an imagined enemy. The club went on, largely as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, when merging with other societies, it became the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was seen in some organized method on the Thames around the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland funded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV ascended to monarchy in 1820, it was named the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded with a racing argument, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht organisation 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 location of British yachting. The society at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, also at the rise of George IV. Every member was required to possess boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing tests for large stakes were held, and the society life was splendid. Ultimately Royal Yachting Club boats grew in size to bigger than 350 tons.
In North America, yachting started with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and continued when the English took power. Sailing was for the most part for fun and reached its high point in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which cruised on the Mediterranean Sea and set a standard of luxury and sophistication for the later yachts in the area from the late 19th century. The first continuing 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 design of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through to the second half of the 19th century. The craft of bigger yachts was originally heavily put upon by the success of America, which was designed 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 success at Cowes in 1851. The first yachts were not designed and manufactured in the modern sense, with only a model for an outline. Not until the later half of the 19th century did what was labeled naval architecture come into action. Not until the 1920s did the application of the science of aerodynamics do for the structure of sails and rigging what such study had done earlier for hulls.
Because nearly all sailboats had been individually custom-built, there came a requirement for handicapping boats as this was before the one-design class boats were designed. Therefore, a rating rule was written, which ended up in the International Rule, adopted in 1906 and revised in 1919. In modern times, one of the fastest flourishing areas in the field of sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are created to standard requirements in length, beam, sail area, and other aspects (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing for such boats can be had on an even playing field with no handicapping required. A great example is the generic International America’s Cup Class adopted for racers in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
So long as yachting was done primarily for the nobility and the rich, money was no issue, and the size of boats developed, in both length and weight. The promotion and preference of smaller yachts occurred 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 voyage around the world (1895–98) captained single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray made plain the value of small boats. Thereafter in the 20th century, particularly after World War II, smaller racing and recreational craft 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 sailed single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.
Kinds of power yachts
Following the decade 1840–50, during which steam was set to take the place of sail power in commercial vessels, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly employed in leisure craft. Sizeable power yachts were developed to a high degree, and long-distance sailing became a fond activity of the wealthy. The first power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; these then gave way to those powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller sort of propulsion. As in the case of naval and merchant craft, auxiliaries with both sail and power were the yacht archetype for many years. By the latter half of the 20th century, a lot of yachts were still auxiliaries, but the majority were only power yachts that had gasoline or diesel engines.
From the last decade of the 19th century there was a rise in the construction of more sizeable steam yachts. In particular among these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, that had 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 was used in active service in World War II.
As more sizeable and more reliable internal-combustion engines were produced, many large yachts were using them for power. The establishment of the diesel engine, with heavy oil for fuel, was furthered in World War I. From the decade that followed, big power-yacht manufacture grew, reaching a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. During that period the biggest auxiliary yacht constructed was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The building of larger power yachts fell away from 1932, and the style thereafter was toward smaller, less pricey craft. After World War II, many small naval boats were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. In the late 20th century, yachting is a internationally beloved competition enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen individually manning and upkeeping their own small leisure yachts. The amount of yachts and sailors has increased steadily, not only in the traditional places on the beach but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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