Yachting and Yacht Clubs

July 16th, 2010

As the Dutch came to preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the early yacht became 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 yachts was incidental, arising as private challenges. 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 sent 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, reigned 1685–88), built other yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and back, on a £100 bet. Yachting rose as fashionable among the affluent and royalty, but after that point the fashion 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 group, and had great naval panoply and formality. The closest thing to racing was the “chase,” for which the “fleet” pursued a fictional enemy. The club went on, largely as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, when joining with other groups, it became known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).

Yacht racing began in some organized 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 ascended to monarchy in 1820, it came to be named the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded with a racing dispute, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht organisation had been formed 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 continuing setting of British yachting. The club at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, again at the ascension of George IV. Every member was required to have boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing races for high bets were held, and the social life was splendid. Eventually Royal Yachting Club boats were raised in size to bigger than 350 tons.

In North America, yachting began with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and went on when the English had dominance. Sailing was mostly for pleasure and reached its epitome in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which traveled on the Mediterranean Sea and set a standard of luxury and sophistication for the later yachts in that area from the late 19th century. The first continuing American yacht association, the Detroit Boat Club, was instigated in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens instigated the New York Yacht Club while aboard his schooner Gimcrack.

Kinds of sailboats
The Early sailing yachts followed the design of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through to the later half of the 19th century. The style of sizeable yachts was first heavily impacted by the victory of America, which was drawn by George Steers for a group started 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. Early yachts were not designed and manufactured in today’s sense, with only a model for an outline. Not until the second half of the 19th century did what was known as naval architecture come into being. Not until the 1920s did the employment of the study of aerodynamics do for the design of sails and rigging what such science had already done for hulls.

Because most of all sailboats were individually manufactured, there arose a need for handicapping boats before the one-design class boats were made. Thus, a rating rule was decreed, which is found in the International Rule, taken on in 1906 and edited in 1919. In modern times, one of the rapidly flourishing areas in sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are created to single specifications in length, beam, sail area, and other areas (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing between such boats can be had on an even keel with no handicapping at all. A prime example is the generic International America’s Cup Class taken on for participants in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

As long as yachting belonged primarily for the nobility and the rich, expense was no object, and the size of boats grew, in both length and weight. The rise and popularity of smaller yachts occurred in the latter half of the 19th century out of 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) captained single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray proved the seaworthiness of small craft. Thereafter in the 20th century, particularly after World War II, smaller racing and recreational boats became more popular, down to the dinghy, a favourite 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, when steam was set to replace sail power in commercial craft, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were used increasingly in pleasure yachts. Sizeable power yachts were furthered to a high element, and long-distance cruising turned into a fond activity of the rich. The earliest power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; these then made way to those powered by the completely submerged screw or propeller sort of propulsion. Like naval and merchant vessels, auxiliaries carrying both sail and power were the yacht fashion for a number of years. By the later half of the 20th century, several yachts were still auxiliaries, but the majority were only power yachts containing gasoline or diesel engines.

In the last decade of the 19th century there was a rise 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 manned by a crew of at least 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 better quality internal-combustion engines were created, many big yachts began using them for power. The creation of the diesel engine, with heavy oil for fuel, advanced during World War I. During the decade after that, large power-yacht manufacture grew, climaxing in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. In that point the biggest auxiliary yacht built was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The construction of larger power boats declined after 1932, and the style after that was toward smaller, less expensive boats. From World War II, many small naval vessels were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting is a internationally beloved sport enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen individually manning and maintaining their own small leisure boats. The number of craft and yachtsmen is increasing steadily, not only in the traditional locations on the beach but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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