16 Jul 10 Yachting and Yacht Clubs
As the Dutch came to preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the initial yacht was a leisure craft used first by royalty and secondly by the burghers for the canals and then in the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Yacht racing was incidental, arising as private games. English yachting started with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his restoration 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 named Mary. Charles and his brother James, the duke of York (James II, reigned 1685–88), ordered for other yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and the same way back, on a £100 punt. Yachting rose as classy with the affluent and nobility, but after that time the habit did not last.
The first yacht group in the British Isles, the Water Club, was instigated around about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard association, and had much naval panoply and gravity. The closest thing to racing was the “chase,” in which the “fleet” pursued a fictional enemy. The club endured, mostly as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, when conglomerating with other organisations, it became the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was first seen in some ordered method on the Thames about the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland founded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV came to sovereignty in 1820, it came to be called the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded following a racing fight, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht organisation 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 continuing setting of British yachting. The association at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, likewise at the ascension of George IV. All members were required to have boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing tests for large bets were held, and the club 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 was first accomplished with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and went on when the English took control. Sailing was largely for leisure and reached its apogee in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which cruised 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 enduring American yacht society, the Detroit Boat Club, was instigated in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens founded the New York Yacht Club aboard his schooner Gimcrack.
Kinds of sailboats
The first sailing yachts followed the style 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 heavily affected by the victory of America, which was drawn 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 manufactured in a contemporary sense, with just a model used. Not until the second half of the 19th century did what was called naval architecture come into being. Not until the 1920s did the use of the study of aerodynamics do for the structure of sails and rigging what science had previously done for hulls.
Because nearly all sailboats had been individually custom-built, there arose a desire for handicapping boats as this was before the one-design class boats were made. Thus, a rating rule came into being, which resulted in the International Rule, adopted in 1906 and edited in 1919. In modern times, one of the fastest flourishing areas in sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are created to standard dimensions in length, beam, sail area, and other areas (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing for those boats can be done on an even par with no handicapping required. A perfect example is the uniform International America’s Cup Class taken on for participants in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
For the time that yachting belonged primarily for the royal and the wealthy, money was no object, and the size of boats increased, in both length and weight. The rise and popularity of smaller craft occurred in the second 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) sailed single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray proved the hardiness of small boats. Later in the 20th century, notably after World War II, smaller racing and leisure craft became commonplace, down to the dinghy, a favoured training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, yachts of less than 3 m were traveled in single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.
Kinds of power yachts
Post the decade 1840–50, in which steam was set to take the place of sail power in commercial craft, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were favoured increasingly in leisure vessels. Bigger power yachts were progressed to a high element, and long-distance sailing became a preferred pastime of the affluent. The first power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; these then made way to boats powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. Like naval and merchant craft, auxiliaries possessing both sail and power were the yacht archetype for several years. By the second half of the 20th century, many yachts were still auxiliaries, but the large part were solely power yachts containing gasoline or diesel engines.
In the last decade of the 19th century there was a push in the design of large steam yachts. In particular within these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, that had triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was manned 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 gave active service for World War II.
As more sizeable and more dependable internal-combustion engines were developed, many big yachts were using them for power. The creation of the diesel engine, using heavy oil for fuel, progressed in World War I. From the decade that followed, big power-yacht building flourished, hitting a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. In that point the biggest auxiliary yacht constructed was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The building of larger power yachts declined from 1932, and the fashion after that was in preference of smaller, less pricey yachts. From World War II, many small naval craft were bought by private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting is a internationally loved sport enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen who are actually sailing and maintaining their own small recreational boats. The number of craft and yachtsmen increased steadily, not only in the traditional locations along the beach but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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