Yachting and Yacht Clubs
Posted on July 16, 2010, under Uncategorized.
As the Dutch came to dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht was a pleasure craft used mostly by royalty and secondly by the burghers in the canals and the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing yachts was incidental, borne from private challenges. English yachting began with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his restoration to the English monarchy 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 called Mary. Charles and his brother James, the duke of York (James II, sovereign 1685–88), ordered for other yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and returning, on a £100 punt. Yachting rose as popular with the rich and aristocracy, but after that point the trend did not last.
The first yacht association in the British Isles, the Water Club, was formed in about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard association, and had much naval panoply and rigour. The closest thing to racing boats was the “chase,” when the “fleet” pursued an imagined enemy. The club endured, for the large part as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, after joining with other organisations, it was known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was first seen in some organized method on the Thames around the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland funded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV ascended 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 association 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 continuing location of British racing. The organisation at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, again at the ascension of George IV. Each member was required to possess boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing matches for large bids were held, and the social life was lovely. It came to be that the 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 persisted when the English held control. Sailing was largely for pleasure and rose to its high point in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which traveled on the Mediterranean Sea and established a standard of luxury and sophistication for the later yachts in the area from the late 19th century. The first persisting American yacht organisation, the Detroit Boat Club, was started 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 the later half of the 19th century. The craft of bigger yachts was initially largely impacted by the win of America, which was designed by George Steers for a group led by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) had its namesake after its success at Cowes in 1851. The first yachts were not designed and built in a contemporary sense, with just a model for an outline. Not until the latter 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 study had previously done for hulls.
Because nearly all sailboats had been individually manufactured, there came a desire for handicapping boats as this was before the one-design class boats were designed. Thus, a rating rule was decreed, which is found in the International Rule, adopted in 1906 and amended in 1919. Today, one of the rapidly flourishing areas in the sailing industry is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are created to standard dimensions in length, beam, sail area, and other areas (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing between those boats can be had on an even playing field with no handicapping at all. A great example is the standard International America’s Cup Class taken on for participants in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
As long as yachting was an activity largely for the royal and the rich, cost was no issue, and the size of boats increased, in both length and weight. The promotion and popularity of smaller yachts occurred 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) led single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray proved the seaworthiness of smaller yachts. Thereafter in the 20th century, notably after World War II, smaller racing and recreational craft became commonplace, down to the dinghy, a popular training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, craft of less than 3 m were setting sail single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.
Kinds of power yachts
Following 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 increasingly used in leisure craft. Bigger power yachts were furthered to a high degree, and long-distance sailing turned into a favoured pastime of the well off. The first power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; they then gave rise to yachts powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller sort of propulsion. As well as naval and merchant vessels, auxiliaries possessing both sail and power were the yacht fashion for several years. By the later half of the 20th century, many 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 rise in the construction of bigger steam yachts. Conspicuous within 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 over 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 during World War II.
As bigger and better quality internal-combustion engines were produced, many big craft started using them for power. The creation of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, advanced from World War I. During the decade that followed, bigger power-yacht creation flourished, hitting a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. During that period the best auxiliary yacht built was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The construction of big power yachts lessened from 1932, and the fashion from then was toward smaller, less pricey yachts. After World War II, a lot of small naval vessels were sold to private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting is a widespread popular sport enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen personally sailing and upkeeping their own small leisure craft. The popularity of craft and sailors is increasing steadily, not only in the traditional places by the seacoasts but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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