As the Dutch rose to preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the initial yacht was a pleasure craft used initially by royalty and later by the burghers in the canals and then in the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Yacht racing was incidental, coming out of private challenges. English yachting began with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his reaffirmation 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 called Mary. Charles and his brother James, the duke of York (James II, ruled 1685–88), made more yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and back, on a £100 wager. Yachting was found to be fashionable for the rich and nobility, but after that time the trend did not last.

The first yacht club 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 large naval panoply and rigour. The closest thing to a race was the “chase,” in which the “fleet” pursued an imaginary enemy. The club went on, for the large part as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, when conglomerating with other groups, it became the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).

Yacht racing was seen in some ordered fashion on the Thames in the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland funded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV came to sovereignty in 1820, it was 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 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 continuing location of British yachting. The society at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, likewise at the rise of George IV. Each member was required to own boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing tests for great stakes were held, and the society life was superlative. It came to be that the Royal Yachting Club boats increased 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 control. Sailing was mostly for pleasure and rose to its apogee in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which sailed on the Mediterranean Sea and established a standard of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in those waters from the late 19th century. The first persisting American yacht organisation, the Detroit Boat Club, was formed in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens instigated the New York Yacht Club while aboard his schooner Gimcrack.

Kinds of sailboats
Early sailing yachts were within the style of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through to the later half of the 19th century. The craft of sizeable yachts was originally heavily affected by the success of America, which was drawn by George Steers for a association led by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) was named after its win at Cowes in 1851. Early yachts were not designed and crafted in a contemporary sense, with merely a model being used. Not until the later half of the 19th century did what was labeled naval architecture come into being. Not until the 1920s did the application of the science of aerodynamics do for the design of sails and rigging what such science had already done for hulls.

Because nearly all sailboats were individually built, there was a desire for handicapping boats as this was before the one-design class boats were built. Thus, a rating rule was decreed, which ended up in the International Rule, adopted in 1906 and edited in 1919. In the present day, one of the fastest growing areas in the sailing industry 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 areas (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing between these boats can be done on an even keel with no handicapping required. A perfect example is the standard International America’s Cup Class adopted for racers in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

As long as yachting was done largely for the royal and the rich, money was no issue, and the size of boats developed, in both length and weight. The ascendancy and popularity of smaller boats 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 made plain the seaworthiness of smaller craft. Thereafter in the 20th century, particularly after World War II, smaller racing and recreational 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, in which steam began to take the place of sail power in market boats, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were employed more and more in pleasure yachts. Large power yachts were developed to a high element, and long-distance travel turned into a preferred activity of the wealthy. The first power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then made way to yachts powered by the completely submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. As in the case of 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, several yachts were still auxiliaries, but the majority were solely power yachts that had gasoline or diesel engines.

During the last decade of the 19th century there was a push in the design of more sizeable steam yachts. In particular among these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, with triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was sailed 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 bigger and more reliable internal-combustion engines were developed, many large craft were using them for power. The creation of the diesel engine, with heavy oil for fuel, advanced in World War I. From the decade following, bigger power-yacht creation flourished, climaxing in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. From that period the best auxiliary yacht manufactured was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The building of bigger power craft fell away in 1932, and the style after that was for smaller, less pricey boats. From World War II, many small naval craft were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. In the late 20th century, yachting had become a widespread loved competition enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen who are actually owning and maintaining their own small recreational yachts. The number of craft and yachtsmen is increasing steadily, not only in the traditional areas by the seacoasts but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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