Yachting and Yacht Clubs

July 16th, 2010

As the Dutch came to dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht had been a leisure craft used initially by royalty and secondly by the burghers in the canals and then in the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing was incidental, arising as private challenges. English yachting began with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his return to the English royalty 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, sovereign 1685–88), built other yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and back, on a £100 wager. Yachting rose as popular with the rich and royalty, but after that time the trend did not last.

The first yacht club in the British Isles, the Water Club, was started around about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard group, and held great naval panoply and formality. The closest thing to a race was the “chase,” in which the “fleet” pursued an imagined enemy. The club went on, largely as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, by merging with other organisations, it became the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).

Yacht racing was seen in some organized fashion on the Thames around the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland instigated the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV came to the throne in 1820, it was called the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded with a racing fight, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht society 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 site of British yachting. The association at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, again at the accession of George IV. All members were required to own boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing matches for large bets were held, and the club life was superlative. It came to be that the Royal Yachting Club boats increased in size to more than 350 tons.

In North America, yachting started with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and went on when the English took dominance. Sailing was largely for fun and rose to 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 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 began the New York Yacht Club while on board his schooner Gimcrack.

Kinds of sailboats
The first sailing yachts took the design of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through to the latter half of the 19th century. The design of sizeable yachts was first largely impacted by the success of America, which was created 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 win at Cowes in 1851. The first yachts were not designed and built in a contemporary sense, with only a model for an outline. Not until the latter half of the 19th century did what was called naval architecture come about. Not until the 1920s did the application of the science of aerodynamics do for the structure of sails and rigging what such science had previously done for hulls.

Because almost all sailboats had to be individually manufactured, there was a need for handicapping boats before the one-design class boats were designed. Hence, a rating rule was created, which ended up in the International Rule, taken on in 1906 and edited in 1919. In the present day, one of the fastest blossoming areas in sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are built to the same specifications 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 playing field with no handicapping necessary. A great example is the uniform International America’s Cup Class taken on for yachts in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

For the time that yachting was done primarily for the aristocracy and the rich, cost was no object, and the size of boats developed, in both length and weight. The promotion and preference of smaller craft happened 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 voyage 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. Later in the 20th century, particularly after World War II, smaller racing and pleasure yachts 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 setting sail single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.

Kinds of power yachts
Following the decade 1840–50, in which steam was set to replace sail power in public boats, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were employed more and more in personal boats. Bigger power yachts were progressed to a high element, and long-distance cruising became a preferred occupation of the affluent. The earliest power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then made way to those powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller sort of propulsion. As well as naval and merchant boats, auxiliaries carrying both sail and power were the yacht fashion for many years. By the later half of the 20th century, a lot of yachts were still auxiliaries, but the larger part were only power yachts that had gasoline or diesel engines.

In the last decade of the 19th century there was a push in the manufacture of more sizeable steam yachts. In particular among these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, that had triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was sailed 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 was used in active service for World War II.

As more sizeable and better quality internal-combustion engines were created, many big craft were using them for power. The establishment of the diesel engine, using heavy oil for fuel, progressed in World War I. In the decade after that, big power-yacht creation flourished, climaxing in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. During that point the biggest auxiliary yacht built was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The manufacture of big power yachts fell away from 1932, and the trend thereafter was in preference of smaller, less costly boats. Following World War II, a lot of small naval vessels were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting has become a widespread loved sport enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen who are actually owning and keeping their own small leisure craft. The amount of yachts 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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