Tents and Marquees

As the Dutch came to dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the early yacht was a pleasure craft used initially by royalty and later by the burghers for the canals and the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Yacht racing was incidental, arising as private matches. English yachting originated 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 gave him 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), ordered for other yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and returning, on a £100 wager. Yachting was found to be fashionable with the affluent and aristocracy, but after that period the trend did not last.

The first yacht group in the British Isles, the Water Club, was formed around about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard organization, with great naval panoply and formality. The closest thing to a race was the “chase,” when the “fleet” pursued an imaginary enemy. The club persisted, for the large part as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, after conglomerating with other clubs, it became the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).

Yacht racing was first seen in some stipulated manner on the Thames around the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland instigated the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV ascended to sovereignty in 1820, it was called 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 association 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 continued location of British yacht racing. The organisation at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, likewise at the ascension of George IV. Each member was required to have boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing matches for great bids were held, and the social life was lovely. It came to be that the Royal Yachting Club boats were raised in size to over 350 tons.

In North America, yachting began with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and persisted when the English held control. Sailing was for the most part for pleasure and found its apogee in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which sailed on the Mediterranean Sea and established a benchmark of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in that area from the late 19th century. The first continuing American yacht organisation, the Detroit Boat Club, was started in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens began the New York Yacht Club while aboard his schooner Gimcrack.

Kinds of sailboats
Early sailing yachts were within the lines of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through the later half of the 19th century. The style of sizeable yachts was originally greatly affected by the win of America, which was designed by George Steers for a club led 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 built in today’s sense, with merely a model being used. Not until the later half of the 19th century did what was known as 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 it had done earlier for hulls.

Because nearly all sailboats had been individually built, there came a desire for handicapping boats previous to the one-design class boats were designed. Therefore, a rating rule was decreed, which ended up in the International Rule, accepted in 1906 and revised in 1919. In the present day, one of the rapidly growing areas in sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are built to single requirements in length, beam, sail area, and other aspects (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing those boats can be held on an even keel with no handicapping required. A perfect example is the standard International America’s Cup Class taken on board for participants in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

So long as yachting was done largely for the nobility and the wealthy, expense was no problem, and the size of boats increased, in both length and weight. The ascendancy and popularity of smaller yachts came in the later 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 demonstrated the value of small yachts. Thereafter in the 20th century, notably after World War II, smaller racing and recreational craft became more popular, down to the dinghy, a preferred training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, yachts of less than 3 m were sailed single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.

Kinds of power yachts
Post the decade 1840–50, during which steam was set to emulate sail power in market vessels, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were favoured increasingly in pleasure boats. Large power yachts were progressed to a high degree, and long-distance travel became a preferred activity of the well off. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; they then gave rise to yachts powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. Like naval and merchant yachts, auxiliaries possessing both sail and power were the yacht fashion for several years. By the latter half of the 20th century, many yachts were still auxiliaries, but the large part were only power yachts that had gasoline or diesel engines.

From the last decade of the 19th century there was a push in the design of more sizeable 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 operated by a crew of at least 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 during World War II.

As bigger and better quality internal-combustion engines were produced, many big craft began using them for power. The creation of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, progressed during World War I. In the decade following that, bigger power-yacht building grew, hitting a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. During that point the best auxiliary yacht built was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The building of large power craft declined from 1932, and the trend after that was in preference of smaller, less expensive craft. After World War II, many small naval vessels were bought by private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting is a globally popular competition enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen individually sailing and maintaining their own small recreational boats. The popularity of boats and yachtsmen is increasing steadily, not only in the traditional areas by the beach but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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