Yachting and Yacht Clubs

July 16th, 2010

As the Dutch came to dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the initial yacht became a pleasure craft used initially by royalty and secondly by the burghers on the canals and then in the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing was incidental, coming out of 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 gave 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, reigned 1685–88), built 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 became popular for the wealthy and aristocracy, but after that point the fashion did not last.

The first yacht association in the British Isles, the Water Club, was started at about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard organization, and had much naval panoply and formality. The closest thing to racing was the “chase,” when the “fleet” pursued a fictional enemy. The club went on, mostly as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, by conglomerating with other clubs, it became known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).

Yacht racing was seen in some ordered 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 ascended to the throne in 1820, it was called the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded after a racing dispute, 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 racing. The organisation at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, likewise at the ascension of George IV. Every member was required to own boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing matches for great stakes were held, and the club life was wonderful. It came to be that the Royal Yachting Club boats grew in size to bigger than 350 tons.

In North America, yachting started with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and persisted when the English took control. Sailing was mostly for pleasure and reached its epitome in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which cruised on the Mediterranean Sea and set a minimum of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in the area from the late 19th century. The first enduring American yacht organisation, the Detroit Boat Club, was started 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 design of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century until the second half of the 19th century. The craft of large yachts was originally heavily impacted by the win of America, which was drawn by George Steers for a club started by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) had its namesake after its win at Cowes in 1851. Early yachts were not designed and crafted in today’s sense, with merely a model for an outline. Not until the second half of the 19th century did what was called naval architecture come about. Not until the 1920s did the use of the science of aerodynamics do for the structure of sails and rigging what it had done earlier for hulls.

Because most of all sailboats had to be individually custom-built, there came a desire for handicapping boats as this was before the one-design class boats were designed. Hence, a rating rule was written, which ended up in the International Rule, accepted in 1906 and amended in 1919. In modern times, one of the 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 single dimensions in length, beam, sail area, and other aspects (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing these boats can be done on an even basis with no handicapping required. A prime example is the generic International America’s Cup Class taken on for participants in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

For the time that yachting was an activity mostly for the nobility and the rich, money was no issue, and the size of boats developed, in both length and weight. The ascendancy and preference of smaller yachts came in the latter 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 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 hardiness of smaller craft. Thereafter in the 20th century, notably after World War II, smaller racing and leisure craft became more popular, down to the dinghy, a favourite training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, craft of less than 3 m were traveled in single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.

Kinds of power yachts
Post the decade 1840–50, when steam began to take the place of sail power in public craft, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were employed more and more in personal yachts. Bigger power yachts were furthered to a high degree, and long-distance sailing was a favourite pastime of the wealthy. The earliest power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; these then gave rise to those powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller type of propulsion. Like naval and merchant boats, auxiliaries carrying both sail and power were the yacht standard for a number of years. By the second half of the 20th century, several yachts were still auxiliaries, but the larger part were exclusively power yachts that had gasoline or diesel engines.

From the last decade of the 19th century there was a push in the construction of bigger steam yachts. Notably within these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, with triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was manned 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 gave active service in World War II.

As larger and better quality internal-combustion engines were created, many big boats began using them for power. The creation of the diesel engine, using heavy oil for fuel, progressed in World War I. During the decade after that, big power-yacht building grew, reaching a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. From that point the biggest auxiliary yacht constructed was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The manufacture of large power craft fell away from 1932, and the trend thereafter was toward smaller, less costly craft. After World War II, many small naval vessels were sold to private owners for conversion to yachts. In the late 20th century, yachting is a globally popular sport enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen personally owning and keeping their own small recreational craft. The popularity of boats and sailors increased steadily, not only in the traditional locations along the seacoasts but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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