Yachting and Yacht Clubs
As the Dutch came to dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht was a pleasure craft used first by royalty and later by the burghers for the canals and the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing was incidental, borne from private matches. English yachting began with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his restoration 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, reigned 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 rose as popular with the affluent and aristocracy, but after that period the fashion did not last.
The first yacht association in the British Isles, the Water Club, was formed at about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard organization, and held much naval panoply and formality. The closest thing to a race was the “chase,” in which the “fleet” pursued an imaginary enemy. The club went on, mostly as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, by conglomerating with other organisations, it became the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was first seen in some ordered manner on the Thames about the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland founded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV rose to the throne in 1820, it came to be known as 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 started 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 perpetual location of British yachting. The organisation at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, also at the accession of George IV. Each member was required to have boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing matches for large bids were held, and the society life was splendid. Eventually Royal Yachting Club boats increased in size to more than 350 tons.
In North America, yachting was first accomplished with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and persisted when the English took dominance. Sailing was mostly for pleasure and reached its apogee in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which cruised on the Mediterranean Sea and established a standard of luxury and sophistication 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 first sailing yachts took the lines of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through to the later half of the 19th century. The design of sizeable yachts was initially heavily affected by the win 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 win at Cowes in 1851. Earlier yachts were not designed and crafted in today’s sense, with merely a model for an outline. Not until the latter half of the 19th century did what was labeled naval architecture come about. Not until the 1920s did the use of the study of aerodynamics do for the structure of sails and rigging what such science had earlier done for hulls.
Because most of all sailboats had to be individually built, there was a requirement for handicapping boats as this was previous to the one-design class boats were made. Hence, a rating rule was written, which ended up in the International Rule, adopted in 1906 and revised in 1919. In the present day, one of the most rapidly flourishing areas in sailing 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 aspects (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing for those boats can be held on an even keel with no handicapping at all. A perfect example is the uniform International America’s Cup Class taken on board for yachts in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
So long as yachting was done largely for the aristocracy and the wealthy, expense was no issue, and the size of boats grew, in both length and weight. The promotion and preference of smaller boats came in the later 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) led single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray demonstrated the value of smaller boats. Later in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and recreational craft became more popular, down to the dinghy, a favourite 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
Post the decade 1840–50, in which steam was set to replace sail power in commercial boats, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly favoured in personal boats. Sizeable power yachts were progressed to a high degree, and long-distance travel turned into a favourite pastime of the affluent. The earliest power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then gave way to boats powered by the completely submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. As in the case of naval and merchant vessels, auxiliaries possessing both sail and power were the yacht fashion for many years. By the latter half of the 20th century, a lot of yachts were still auxiliaries, but the large part were solely power yachts with gasoline or diesel engines.
From the last decade of the 19th century there was a rise in the design of more sizeable steam yachts. Conspicuous among 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 more than 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 saw active service for World War II.
As more sizeable and more dependable internal-combustion engines were produced, many big craft were using them for power. The establishment of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, was furthered in World War I. In the decade after, big power-yacht manufacture blossomed, climaxing in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. During that point the biggest auxiliary yacht manufactured was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The manufacture of large power yachts declined from 1932, and the fashion thereafter was for smaller, less pricey yachts. Following World War II, a lot of small naval boats were bought by private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting had become a widespread loved activity enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen individually manning and keeping their own small leisure craft. The amount of boats and owners is increasing steadily, not only in the traditional locations along the sea but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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