As the Dutch came to preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht had been a leisure craft used initially by royalty and secondly by the burghers on the canals as well as the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing yachts was incidental, arising as private games. English yachting began 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), ordered for additional yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and the same way back, on a £100 punt. Yachting became fashionable for the affluent and aristocracy, but after that point the fashion did not last.

The first yacht association in the British Isles, the Water Club, was instigated in about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard group, and held much naval panoply and rigour. 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 conglomerating with other organisations, it became the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).

Yacht racing began in some organized 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 came to sovereignty in 1820, it came to be 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 organisation had been started 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 site of British racing. The club at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, also at the ascension of George IV. Each member was required to possess boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing races for high bids were held, and the club life was lovely. Ultimately Royal Yachting Club boats grew in size to more than 350 tons.

In North America, yachting began with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and continued when the English took dominance. Sailing was largely for fun 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 sophistication for the later yachts in those waters from the late 19th century. The first enduring American yacht organisation, the Detroit Boat Club, was started in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens instigated the New York Yacht Club while on board his schooner Gimcrack.

Kinds of sailboats
The Early sailing yachts were within the style of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through the second half of the 19th century. The craft of large yachts was initially heavily affected by the victory of America, which was drawn by George Steers for a syndicate headed by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) had its namesake after its win at Cowes in 1851. The first yachts were not designed and manufactured in today’s sense, with only a model used. Not until the latter half of the 19th century did what was known as naval architecture come into action. Not until the 1920s did the application of the study of aerodynamics do for the design of sails and rigging what science had already done for hulls.

Because almost all sailboats had to be individually manufactured, there was a requirement for handicapping boats previous to the one-design class boats were designed. Hence, a rating rule was created, which is found in the International Rule, adopted in 1906 and amended in 1919. In modern times, one of the rapidly blossoming areas in the sailing industry is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are built to the same specifications in length, beam, sail area, and other elements (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing for such boats can be done on an even basis with no handicapping at all. A perfect example is the standard International America’s Cup Class adopted for participants in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

So long as yachting was done mostly for the aristocracy and the rich, money was no issue, and the size of boats increased, in both length and weight. The ascendancy and desire of smaller yachts 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 proved the seaworthiness of less sizeable yachts. Thereafter in the 20th century, particularly after World War II, smaller racing and recreational 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 setting sail single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.

Kinds of power yachts
Following the decade 1840–50, during which steam started to take the place of sail power in public craft, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly employed in pleasure craft. Large power yachts were progressed to a high element, and long-distance cruising was a favoured pastime of the wealthy. The earliest power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then gave way to boats powered by the completely submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. Like naval and merchant boats, auxiliaries carrying both sail and power were the yacht standard for several years. By the second half of the 20th century, many yachts were still auxiliaries, but the larger part were only power yachts containing gasoline or diesel engines.

During the last decade of the 19th century there was a push in the manufacture of more sizeable steam yachts. In particular among these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, containing triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was operated by a crew of at least 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 in World War II.

As more sizeable and more dependable internal-combustion engines were produced, many large craft were using them for power. The establishment of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, advanced from World War I. From the decade that followed, bigger power-yacht manufacture grew, hitting a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. From that time the largest auxiliary yacht constructed was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The manufacture of bigger power boats declined from 1932, and the fashion thereafter was in preference of smaller, less pricey yachts. After World War II, a lot of small naval boats were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. In the late 20th century, yachting had become a internationally loved sport enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen personally sailing and upkeeping their own small leisure yachts. The amount of yachts and yachtsmen is increasing steadily, not only in the traditional places on the beach but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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