Yachting and Yacht Clubs
Filed Under Uncategorized
As the Dutch came to preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the initial yacht was a leisure craft used initially by royalty and later by the burghers for the canals and the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing was incidental, coming out of private matches. English yachting originated with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his return to the English royalty 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), ordered for other yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and the same way back, on a £100 wager. Yachting was found to be classy among the rich and aristocracy, but after that point the fashion did not last.
The first yacht club in the British Isles, the Water Club, was started in about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard group, with great naval panoply and formality. The closest thing to racing was the “chase,” for which the “fleet” pursued an imagined enemy. The club persisted, for the large part as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, when joining with other groups, it was known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).
Yacht racing was first seen in some organized manner on the Thames about 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 came to be named the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded with a racing argument, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht group 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 continued location of British yacht racing. The club 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 matches for great bids were held, and the social 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 persisted when the English took control. Sailing was mostly for pleasure and found its high point in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which traveled on the Mediterranean Sea and established a minimum of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in that area from the late 19th century. The first persisting American yacht organisation, the Detroit Boat Club, was instigated in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens began the New York Yacht Club aboard his schooner Gimcrack.
Kinds of sailboats
The Early sailing yachts were within the design of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through the latter half of the 19th century. The design of sizeable yachts was initially heavily put upon by the success of America, which was drawn by George Steers for a association headed by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) found its namesake after its victory at Cowes in 1851. Early yachts were not designed and crafted in today’s sense, with just a model being used. Not until the later half of the 19th century did what was known as 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 previously done for hulls.
Because nearly all sailboats had to be individually manufactured, there arose a need for handicapping boats as this was before the one-design class boats were designed. Thus, a rating rule was decreed, which ended up in the International Rule, taken on in 1906 and edited in 1919. In modern times, one of the rapidly growing areas in the field of sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are created to single requirements in length, beam, sail area, and other areas (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing between such boats can be done on an even keel with no handicapping required. A great example is the generic International America’s Cup Class adopted for yachts in the 1992 America’s Cup race.
For the time that yachting was an activity largely for the royal and the affluent, cost was no issue, and the size of boats grew, in both length and weight. The ascendancy and preference of smaller boats happened in the second 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 voyage around the world (1895–98) captained single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray made plain the hardiness of smaller craft. Later in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and leisure yachts became more common, down to the dinghy, a favoured training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, boats of less than 3 m were setting sail single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.
Kinds of power yachts
Post the decade 1840–50, at which point steam began to take the place of sail power in commercial craft, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly employed in pleasure yachts. Bigger power yachts were furthered to a high standard, and long-distance sailing was a preferred activity of the wealthy. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then gave way to yachts powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller sort of propulsion. As in the case of naval and merchant craft, auxiliaries carrying both sail and power were the yacht fashion for a number of years. By the second half of the 20th century, many yachts were still auxiliaries, but the majority were only power yachts that had gasoline or diesel engines.
In the last decade of the 19th century there was a push 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 operated 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 larger and better quality internal-combustion engines were produced, many large craft started using them for power. The establishment of the diesel engine, with heavy oil for fuel, progressed from World War I. In the decade that followed, large power-yacht building grew, hitting a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. In that time the biggest auxiliary yacht built was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.
The manufacture of bigger power craft declined in 1932, and the trend thereafter was toward smaller, less costly boats. After World War II, a lot of small naval boats were bought by private owners for conversion to yachts. By the late 20th century, yachting had become a internationally beloved competition enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen individually owning and upkeeping their own small pleasure yachts. The amount of craft and owners increased steadily, not only in the traditional places along the beach but also on inland waterways and lakes.
Looking for boat transport Sunshine Coast ? Talk to Elite Yacht Services. We do great work at competitive prices.
Sphere: Related Content