As the Dutch rose to dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the early yacht was a pleasure craft used mostly by royalty and later by the burghers in the canals and the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Yacht racing was incidental, arising as private games. 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, ruled 1685–88), made additional yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and returning, on a £100 wager. Yachting was found to be popular among the affluent and nobility, but after that time the fashion did not last.
The first yacht association in the British Isles, the Water Club, was instigated 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 boats was the “chase,” for which the “fleet” pursued an imagined enemy. The club endured, mostly as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, when joining with other groups, it became the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was seen in some ordered manner on the Thames about the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland founded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV came to the throne in 1820, it was known as 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 group had been started 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, also 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 stakes were held, and the society life was wonderful. It came to be that the Royal Yachting Club boats were raised in size to bigger than 350 tons.
In North America, yachting was first accomplished with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and continued when the English gained power. Sailing was mostly for fun and reached its high point 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 that area from the late 19th century. The first continuing American yacht organisation, the Detroit Boat Club, was started in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens founded 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 until the latter half of the 19th century. The craft of bigger yachts was originally greatly impacted by the victory 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 victory at Cowes in 1851. Early yachts were not designed and built in the modern sense, with merely a model being used. 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 science of aerodynamics do for the structure of sails and rigging what it had already done for hulls.
Because almost all sailboats had to be individually manufactured, there came a need for handicapping boats before the one-design class boats were designed. Thus, a rating rule was created, which ended up in the International Rule, taken on in 1906 and revised in 1919. Today, 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 the same requirements in length, beam, sail area, and other areas (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing for these boats can be held on an even basis with no handicapping necessary. A great example is the generic International America’s Cup Class taken on for racers 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 grew, in both length and weight. The rise and desire of smaller boats came in the latter half of the 19th century in 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) led single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray made plain the seaworthiness of smaller craft. Later in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and pleasure craft became more common, down to the dinghy, a popular training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, yachts of less than 3 m were sailed single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.
Kinds of power yachts
Following the decade 1840–50, when steam was set to emulate sail power in commercial vessels, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly used in leisure yachts. Sizeable power yachts were developed to a high degree, and long-distance travel became a fond activity of the affluent. The first power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then gave rise to yachts powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller sort of propulsion. As in the case of naval and merchant craft, auxiliaries possessing both sail and power were the yacht fashion for many years. By the latter half of the 20th century, many yachts were still auxiliaries, but the large part were solely power yachts that had gasoline or diesel engines.
During the last decade of the 19th century there was a push in the manufacture of more sizeable steam yachts. Notably among these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, containing triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was sailed by a crew of at least 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 gave active service for World War II.
As larger and better quality internal-combustion engines were developed, many bigger craft began using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, was furthered during 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 time the largest auxiliary yacht manufactured was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The building of big power yachts lessened in 1932, and the fashion after that was for smaller, less pricey yachts. After World War II, a lot of small naval vessels were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. By the late 20th century, yachting is a internationally popular activity enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen who are actually sailing and keeping their own small recreational boats. The popularity of boats and sailors is increasing steadily, not only in the traditional places along the seacoasts but also on inland waterways and lakes.
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Tags: boat detailing brisbane, yacht detailing brisbaneJuly 16th, 2010UncategorizedRead More >No Comments