Yachting and Yacht Clubs
As the Dutch found dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht had been a pleasure craft used initially by royalty and later by the burghers for the canals and then in the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing was incidental, coming out of private challenges. English yachting started with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his return to the English throne 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), made other yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and the same way back, on a £100 wager. Yachting was found to be popular for the wealthy and nobility, but after that time the fashion did not last.
The first yacht club in the British Isles, the Water Club, was started in about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard association, and had great naval panoply and gravity. The closest thing to racing was the “chase,” in which the “fleet” pursued an imaginary enemy. The club persisted, mostly as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, by merging with other groups, it became known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was seen in some ordered fashion on the Thames in the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland instigated the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV came to the throne 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 society had been initiated at Cowes on the Isle of Wight in 1815, and royal funding made the Solent – the strait between the mainland and the Isle of Wight – the perpetual setting of British racing. The club at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, again at the ascension of George IV. Each member was required to possess boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing races for high stakes were held, and the society life was superlative. Eventually Royal Yachting Club boats increased in size to more than 350 tons.
In North America, yachting began with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and continued when the English gained control. Sailing was mostly for pleasure and reached its high point in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which traveled on the Mediterranean Sea and created a benchmark of luxury and sophistication for the later yachts in that area from the late 19th century. The first continuing American yacht society, the Detroit Boat Club, was instigated in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens founded the New York Yacht Club while aboard his schooner Gimcrack.
Kinds of sailboats
The Early sailing yachts followed the style of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century until the second half of the 19th century. The craft of bigger yachts was first largely impacted by the success of America, which was created by George Steers for a syndicate headed by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) found its namesake after its victory at Cowes in 1851. Earlier yachts were not designed and crafted in a contemporary sense, with only a model used. Not until the later half of the 19th century did what was called naval architecture come into being. Not until the 1920s did the employment of the science of aerodynamics do for the structure of sails and rigging what such science had already done for hulls.
Because most of all sailboats were individually manufactured, there arose a desire for handicapping boats before the one-design class boats were built. Therefore, a rating rule was created, which resulted in the International Rule, taken on in 1906 and revised in 1919. In the present day, one of the most rapidly blossoming areas in sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are created to the same requirements in length, beam, sail area, and other aspects (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing for those boats can be done on an even playing field with no handicapping at all. A prime example is the uniform International America’s Cup Class adopted for yachts in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
For the time that yachting was done mostly for the nobility and the affluent, money was no object, and the size of boats developed, in both length and weight. The promotion and preference of smaller boats happened in the second half of the 19th century out of the sailing of the Englishmen R.T. McMullen, a stockbroker, and E.F. Knight, a barrister and journalist. A journey 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 smaller yachts. Thereafter in the 20th century, notably after World War II, smaller racing and recreational craft became more common, down to the dinghy, a preferred 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
Post the decade 1840–50, when steam started to take the place of sail power in commercial vessels, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were favoured increasingly in pleasure vessels. Large power yachts were furthered to a high element, and long-distance travel was a favoured pastime of the wealthy. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; these then made way to yachts powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. Like naval and merchant yachts, auxiliaries carrying both sail and power were the yacht archetype for a number of years. By the later half of the 20th century, several yachts were still auxiliaries, but the larger part were only power yachts with gasoline or diesel engines.
From the last decade of the 19th century there was a boom in the design of large steam yachts. Notably within these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, that had triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was operated by a crew of more than 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 saw active service during World War II.
As larger and more reliable internal-combustion engines were developed, many bigger craft began using them for power. The creation of the diesel engine, with heavy oil for fuel, advanced from World War I. From the decade following, large power-yacht building grew, climaxing in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. From that time the biggest auxiliary yacht manufactured was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The manufacture of large power craft fell away after 1932, and the trend after that was for smaller, less expensive yachts. From World War II, many small naval boats were bought by private owners for conversion to yachts. By the late 20th century, yachting has become a internationally beloved sport enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen who are actually manning and upkeeping their own small pleasure boats. The number of boats and yachtsmen has increased steadily, not only in the traditional places by the beach but also on inland waterways and lakes.
Looking for yacht transport Gold Coast ? Talk to Elite Yacht Services. We do great work at competitive prices.