Yachting and Yacht Clubs
As the Dutch found preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the early yacht had been a pleasure craft used mostly by royalty and then by the burghers for the canals and the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing was incidental, borne from private games. 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) pleasure boat with a beam (maximum width) of 5.6 m (18 feet), which he then named Mary. Charles and his brother James, the duke of York (James II, ruled 1685–88), made more yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and back, on a £100 bet. Yachting was found to be classy among the wealthy and royalty, but after that time the habit 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 group, and held great naval panoply and gravity. The closest thing to a race was the “chase,” for which the “fleet” pursued an imagined enemy. The club persisted, largely as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, when conglomerating with other groups, it became the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was seen in some stipulated fashion on the Thames in 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 came to be called the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded following a racing dispute, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht group had been initiated 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 continued setting of British racing. The association at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, again at the accession of George IV. All members were required to have boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing matches for large bids were held, and the social life was splendid. Ultimately Royal Yachting Club boats grew in size to bigger than 350 tons.
In North America, yachting was first accomplished with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and went on when the English took power. Sailing was mostly for leisure and rose to its high point in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which sailed on the Mediterranean Sea and established a minimum of luxury and sophistication for the later yachts in those waters from the late 19th century. The first persisting American yacht organisation, 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 Early sailing yachts followed the design of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century until the latter half of the 19th century. The style of large yachts was first greatly put upon by the victory of America, which was created by George Steers for a association headed by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) had its namesake after its victory at Cowes in 1851. Early yachts were not designed and crafted in the modern sense, with only a model used. Not until the latter half of the 19th century did what was labeled naval architecture come into being. Not until the 1920s did the use of the science of aerodynamics do for the craft of sails and rigging what such science had earlier done for hulls.
Because most of all sailboats had been individually custom-built, there arose a need for handicapping boats before the one-design class boats were designed. Thus, a rating rule was created, which resulted in the International Rule, accepted in 1906 and edited in 1919. In modern times, one of the rapidly growing areas in 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 elements (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing for these boats can be done on an even playing field with no handicapping necessary. A perfect example is the standard International America’s Cup Class taken on 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 rise and desire of smaller yachts came 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 trip around the world (1895–98) captained single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray made plain the hardiness of smaller boats. Thereafter in the 20th century, particularly after World War II, smaller racing and recreational craft became commonplace, down to the dinghy, a favoured training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, boats of less than 3 m were sailed single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.
Kinds of power yachts
Post the decade 1840–50, at which point steam was set to emulate sail power in public craft, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were employed increasingly in pleasure craft. Sizeable power yachts were developed to a high degree, and long-distance cruising became a favoured pastime of the well off. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then made way to boats powered by the completely submerged screw or propeller type of propulsion. As in the case of naval and merchant craft, auxiliaries carrying both sail and power were the yacht fashion for several years. By the latter half of the 20th century, several yachts were still auxiliaries, but the majority were solely power yachts containing gasoline or diesel engines.
During the last decade of the 19th century there was a push in the construction of large steam yachts. Notably among these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, containing triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was manned by a crew of over 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 in World War II.
As more sizeable and more reliable internal-combustion engines were developed, many big yachts were using them for power. The establishment of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, advanced from World War I. During the decade after, bigger power-yacht building flourished, reaching a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. From that time the largest auxiliary yacht manufactured was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The building of larger power boats declined in 1932, and the trend thereafter was for smaller, less expensive craft. From World War II, many small naval craft were sold to private owners for conversion to yachts. By the late 20th century, yachting has become a widespread popular competition enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen personally manning and maintaining their own small recreational boats. The number of yachts and owners is increasing steadily, not only in the traditional locations by the seacoasts but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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