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As the Dutch came to preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the early yacht became a pleasure craft used mostly by royalty and then by the burghers on the canals and then in the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Yacht racing was incidental, coming out of private games. English yachting began with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his return to the English throne in 1660, the city of Amsterdam gave him a 20-metre (66-foot) leisure boat with a beam (maximum width) of 5.6 m (18 feet), which he then named Mary. Charles and his brother James, the duke of York (James II, sovereign 1685–88), built additional yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and returning, on a £100 bet. Yachting rose as fashionable among the wealthy and nobility, but after that time the fashion did not last.

The first yacht club in the British Isles, the Water Club, was formed at about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard association, and had much naval panoply and gravity. The closest thing to a race was the “chase,” for which the “fleet” pursued an imagined enemy. The club endured, for the large part as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, when joining with other clubs, it became the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).

Yacht racing was seen in some ordered 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 came to sovereignty in 1820, it came to be named the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded following 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 funding made the Solent - the strait between the mainland and the Isle of Wight - the continuing site of British yachting. The society at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, likewise at the accession of George IV. Each member was required to own boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing races for large bets were held, and the club life was lovely. It came to be that the Royal Yachting Club boats increased in size to bigger than 350 tons.

In North America, yachting started with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and persisted when the English had power. Sailing was mostly for pleasure and rose to its high point in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which sailed on the Mediterranean Sea and established a benchmark of luxury and sophistication for the later yachts in those waters from the late 19th century. The first persisting American yacht society, the Detroit Boat Club, was started in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens began the New York Yacht Club aboard his schooner Gimcrack.

Kinds of sailboats
The first sailing yachts were within the lines 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 initially largely put upon by the success of America, which was created by George Steers for a group headed by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) had its namesake after its victory at Cowes in 1851. Earlier yachts were not designed and manufactured in a contemporary sense, with only a model for an outline. Not until the second half of the 19th century did what was known as naval architecture come into action. Not until the 1920s did the application of the research of aerodynamics do for the structure of sails and rigging what such science had already done for hulls.

Because nearly all sailboats were individually built, there was a desire for handicapping boats previous to the one-design class boats were built. Therefore, a rating rule was written, which is found in the International Rule, accepted in 1906 and amended in 1919. Today, one of the most rapidly growing areas in sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are manufactured to single requirements 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 keel with no handicapping required. A prime example is the standard International America’s Cup Class taken on for racers in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

For the time that yachting was an activity largely for the royal and the rich, cost was no object, and the size of boats grew, in both length and weight. The rise and popularity of smaller craft happened in the later 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) sailed single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray proved the seaworthiness of less sizeable yachts. Following this in the 20th century, notably after World War II, smaller racing and recreational boats became more common, down to the dinghy, a favourite training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, yachts of less than 3 m were traveled in single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.

Kinds of power yachts
Post the decade 1840–50, in which steam started to replace sail power in public boats, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly used in pleasure boats. Sizeable power yachts were developed to a high degree, and long-distance cruising became a preferred occupation of the rich. The first power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; these then made way to those powered by the completely submerged screw or propeller sort of propulsion. As in the case of naval and merchant vessels, auxiliaries with both sail and power were the yacht fashion for several years. By the second half of the 20th century, a lot of yachts were still auxiliaries, but the majority were solely 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. In particular among 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 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 saw active service for World War II.

As bigger and more reliable internal-combustion engines were developed, many large yachts started using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, was furthered for World War I. During the decade following, large power-yacht manufacture flourished, hitting a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. From that time the biggest auxiliary yacht built was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The construction of bigger power yachts fell away from 1932, and the style after that was toward smaller, less pricey yachts. Following World War II, a lot of small naval craft were bought by private owners for conversion to yachts. By the late 20th century, yachting had become a globally loved activity enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen personally owning and upkeeping their own small pleasure boats. The amount of yachts and owners increased steadily, not only in the traditional locations by the sea but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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