Australian Travel

As the Dutch found preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht was a leisure craft used mostly 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 matches. English yachting started with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his return to the English monarchy 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 called Mary. Charles and his brother James, the duke of York (James II, reigned 1685–88), built additional yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and back, on a £100 wager. Yachting became fashionable for the wealthy and aristocracy, but after that point the habit did not last.

The first yacht club in the British Isles, the Water Club, was formed at about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard group, with much naval panoply and gravity. The closest thing to racing boats 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 merging with other groups, it was known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).

Yacht racing began in some stipulated method on the Thames in the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland instigated the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV ascended to sovereignty in 1820, it was then 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 society had been initiated at Cowes on the Isle of Wight in 1815, and royal sponsorship made the Solent - the strait between the mainland and the Isle of Wight - the perpetual location of British racing. The club at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, also at the ascension of George IV. Every member was required to possess boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing races for large stakes were held, and the society life was splendid. It came to be that the Royal Yachting Club boats increased in size to more than 350 tons.

In North America, yachting was first accomplished with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and persisted when the English had dominance. Sailing was for the most part for leisure and found its high point in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which sailed on the Mediterranean Sea and created a minimum of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in the area from the late 19th century. The first enduring American yacht society, 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 first sailing yachts followed 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 craft of sizeable yachts was initially heavily put upon by the win of America, which was drawn by George Steers for a club led by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) was named after its success at Cowes in 1851. The first yachts were not designed and built in a contemporary sense, with merely a model being used. Not until the latter half of the 19th century did what was called naval architecture come about. Not until the 1920s did the use of the study of aerodynamics do for the craft of sails and rigging what it had already done for hulls.

Because almost all sailboats were individually built, there arose a need for handicapping boats as this was before the one-design class boats were designed. Therefore, a rating rule was created, which resulted in the International Rule, accepted in 1906 and edited in 1919. In modern times, one of the most rapidly blossoming areas in sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are built to single requirements in length, beam, sail area, and other aspects (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing for those boats can be done on an even par with no handicapping necessary. A perfect example is the generic International America’s Cup Class adopted for yachts in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

As long as yachting was an activity largely for the royal and the rich, money was no issue, and the size of boats increased, in both length and weight. The promotion and desire of smaller boats came in the later 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 trip around the world (1895–98) led single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray made plain the seaworthiness of less sizeable boats. Later in the 20th century, notably after World War II, smaller racing and leisure yachts 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 sailed single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.

Kinds of power yachts
Post the decade 1840–50, in which steam was set to replace sail power in commercial craft, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were employed more and more in leisure boats. Large power yachts were progressed to a high degree, and long-distance cruising was a preferred pastime of the wealthy. The earliest power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; they then gave way to boats powered by the fully submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. As in the case of naval and merchant vessels, auxiliaries with both sail and power were the yacht standard for many years. By the later half of the 20th century, a lot of yachts were still auxiliaries, but the majority were exclusively power yachts that had gasoline or diesel engines.

From the last decade of the 19th century there was a rise in the construction of more sizeable steam yachts. Conspicuous within 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 at least 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 was used in active service during World War II.

As more sizeable and better quality internal-combustion engines were produced, many large yachts were using them for power. The creation of the diesel engine, with heavy oil for fuel, progressed in World War I. In the decade that followed, big power-yacht building blossomed, hitting a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. During that time the biggest auxiliary yacht manufactured was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The building of larger power craft declined from 1932, and the trend from then was in preference of smaller, less pricey yachts. After World War II, lots of small naval craft were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. By the late 20th century, yachting has become a widespread beloved sport enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen individually sailing and keeping their own small leisure craft. The popularity of craft and owners has increased steadily, not only in the traditional places on the sea but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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