16 Jul 10 Yachting and Yacht Clubs
As the Dutch rose to preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht had been a pleasure craft used first by royalty and then by the burghers in the canals as well as the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing was incidental, arising as private matches. English yachting started with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his reaffirmation to the English throne 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, ruled 1685–88), built additional yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and back, on a £100 bet. Yachting rose as popular for the affluent and nobility, but after that period the fashion did not last.
The first yacht club in the British Isles, the Water Club, was formed at about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard association, and had large naval panoply and rigour. The closest thing to a race was the “chase,” in which the “fleet” pursued a fictional enemy. The club endured, for the large part as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, after conglomerating with other organisations, it was known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was first seen in some organized method on the Thames around the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland instigated the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV rose to sovereignty in 1820, it came to be known as the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded after a racing fight, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht society had been formed 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 location of British yachting. The society at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, again at the ascension of George IV. All members were required to possess boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing races for high bids were held, and the social life was wonderful. It came to be that the Royal Yachting Club boats were raised 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 continued when the English had power. Sailing was largely for leisure and rose to its high point in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which traveled on the Mediterranean Sea and created a standard of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in those waters from the late 19th century. The first continuing American yacht club, the Detroit Boat Club, was instigated in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens founded the New York Yacht Club while on board his schooner Gimcrack.
Kinds of sailboats
The first sailing yachts followed the design of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through the later half of the 19th century. The design of sizeable yachts was first greatly affected by the victory of America, which was designed by George Steers for a association led by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) found its namesake after its success at Cowes in 1851. Earlier yachts were not designed and manufactured in a contemporary sense, with merely a model for an outline. Not until the second half of the 19th century did what was called naval architecture come into action. Not until the 1920s did the employment of the science of aerodynamics do for the design of sails and rigging what such study had earlier done for hulls.
Because nearly all sailboats had to be individually custom-built, there came a requirement for handicapping boats as this was previous to the one-design class boats were built. Thus, a rating rule was decreed, which ended up in the International Rule, taken on in 1906 and revised in 1919. In the present day, one of the most rapidly blossoming areas in the field of sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are built to standard dimensions in length, beam, sail area, and other elements (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing these boats can be held on an even par with no handicapping at all. A great 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 mostly for the aristocracy and the wealthy, money was no object, and the size of boats increased, in both length and weight. The ascendancy and desire of smaller craft 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 journey around the world (1895–98) sailed single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray proved the value of less sizeable boats. Thereafter in the 20th century, notably after World War II, smaller racing and leisure craft became more common, down to the dinghy, a popular training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, boats of less than 3 m were setting sail 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 public craft, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly favoured in leisure craft. Sizeable power yachts were developed to a high element, and long-distance travel turned into a fond activity of the rich. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; they then made way to boats powered by the fully 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 later half of the 20th century, several yachts were still auxiliaries, but the large part were only power yachts that had gasoline or diesel engines.
In the last decade of the 19th century there was a boom in the design of more sizeable steam yachts. In particular of 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, 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 larger and more dependable internal-combustion engines were created, many large boats began using them for power. The establishment of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, was furthered from World War I. During the decade after that, bigger power-yacht creation flourished, hitting a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. In that time the biggest auxiliary yacht constructed was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The construction of larger power yachts lessened after 1932, and the trend after that was toward smaller, less expensive craft. After World War II, lots of small naval boats were bought by private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting has become a globally beloved sport enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen individually sailing and keeping their own small recreational craft. The number of craft and yachtsmen has increased steadily, not only in the traditional areas on the seacoasts but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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