As the Dutch rose to dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the initial yacht was a leisure craft used mostly by royalty and secondly by the burghers in the canals and the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Yacht racing was incidental, arising as private matches. 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 presented him with a 20-metre (66-foot) pleasure boat with a beam (maximum width) of 5.6 m (18 feet), which he named Mary. Charles and his brother James, the duke of York (James II, ruled 1685–88), built more yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and back, on a £100 bet. Yachting became popular with the affluent and nobility, but after that period the fashion did not last.

The first yacht club in the British Isles, the Water Club, was instigated in about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard group, and had large naval panoply and formality. The closest thing to a race was the “chase,” for which the “fleet” pursued an imagined enemy. The club went on, for the large part as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, when merging with other organisations, it became known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).

Yacht racing began in some stipulated fashion on the Thames around the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland founded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV rose to the throne in 1820, it was known as the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded with a racing fight, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht club had been initiated at Cowes on the Isle of Wight in 1815, and royal patronage made the Solent – the strait between the mainland and the Isle of Wight – the perpetual setting of British yachting. The society at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, also at the accession of George IV. Each member was required to have boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing matches for large bets were held, and the club life was lovely. Ultimately Royal Yachting Club boats were raised 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 continued when the English took control. Sailing was mostly for fun and rose to its high point in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which cruised on the Mediterranean Sea and created a benchmark of luxury and sophistication for the later yachts in those waters from the late 19th century. The first continuing American yacht society, the Detroit Boat Club, was started in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens founded 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 until the second half of the 19th century. The craft of sizeable yachts was originally heavily impacted by the win of America, which was designed by George Steers for a club started by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) found its namesake after its success at Cowes in 1851. Earlier yachts were not designed and manufactured in the modern sense, with just a model being used. Not until the later half of the 19th century did what was called naval architecture come about. Not until the 1920s did the employment of the research of aerodynamics do for the structure of sails and rigging what such science had done earlier for hulls.

Because most of all sailboats had been individually manufactured, there came a need for handicapping boats as this was before the one-design class boats were designed. Thus, a rating rule was written, which ended up in the International Rule, accepted in 1906 and revised in 1919. Today, one of the fastest flourishing areas in the field of 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 aspects (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing for such boats can be held on an even basis with no handicapping necessary. A perfect example is the uniform International America’s Cup Class taken on board for yachts in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

As long as yachting belonged largely for the nobility and the rich, money was no object, and the size of boats developed, in both length and weight. The ascendancy and desire of smaller boats occurred in the second 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 journey around the world (1895–98) led single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray demonstrated the value of smaller craft. Following this in the 20th century, notably after World War II, smaller racing and pleasure craft became more popular, down to the dinghy, a preferred training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, craft of less than 3 m were sailed single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.

Kinds of power yachts
After the decade 1840–50, when steam began to emulate sail power in commercial vessels, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were favoured increasingly in leisure yachts. Sizeable power yachts were progressed to a high degree, and long-distance sailing was a preferred pastime of the wealthy. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; they then made way to yachts powered by the fully submerged screw or propeller sort of propulsion. As in the case of naval and merchant boats, auxiliaries with both sail and power were the yacht archetype for a number of years. By the second half of the 20th century, several yachts were still auxiliaries, but the majority were solely power yachts containing gasoline or diesel engines.

During the last decade of the 19th century there was a boom in the construction of bigger steam yachts. In particular among these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, that had triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was operated 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 in World War II.

As bigger and better quality internal-combustion engines were developed, many large craft were using them for power. The creation of the diesel engine, using heavy oil for fuel, progressed in World War I. In the decade following, bigger power-yacht manufacture grew, reaching a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. From that point the biggest auxiliary yacht constructed was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The construction of bigger power boats fell away after 1932, and the trend from then was toward smaller, less pricey boats. Following World War II, lots of small naval boats were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. In the late 20th century, yachting is a globally beloved activity enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen personally owning and upkeeping their own small pleasure boats. The amount of yachts and sailors has increased steadily, not only in the traditional locations on the sea but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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