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As the Dutch found preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht became a leisure craft used mostly by royalty and later by the burghers in the canals and the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing yachts was incidental, arising as private challenges. English yachting started 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) leisure 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), 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 fashionable with the rich and nobility, but after that period the fashion did not last.

The first yacht group in the British Isles, the Water Club, was instigated in about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard association, and had great naval panoply and formality. The closest thing to racing boats was the “chase,” when the “fleet” pursued an imaginary enemy. The club endured, largely as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, by merging with other organisations, it was known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).

Yacht racing began in some organized 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 came to the throne in 1820, it came to be called the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded with a racing dispute, 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 funding made the Solent - the strait between the mainland and the Isle of Wight - the continuing location of British yacht racing. The organisation at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, likewise at the ascension of George IV. Each member was required to own boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing races for great bets were held, and the society life was wonderful. Ultimately Royal Yachting Club boats increased in size to bigger than 350 tons.

In North America, yachting began with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and persisted when the English held power. Sailing was largely for fun and rose to its epitome in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which cruised on the Mediterranean Sea and created a standard of luxury and sophistication for the later yachts in that area from the late 19th century. The first persisting American yacht organisation, the Detroit Boat Club, was started in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens began the New York Yacht Club while on board his schooner Gimcrack.

Kinds of sailboats
Early sailing yachts took the design of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century until the second half of the 19th century. The design of bigger yachts was first largely impacted by the victory 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. The first yachts were not designed and crafted in today’s sense, with just a model being used. Not until the latter half of the 19th century did what was called naval architecture come into being. Not until the 1920s did the employment of the science of aerodynamics do for the design of sails and rigging what it had previously done for hulls.

Because most of all sailboats were individually custom-built, there came a requirement for handicapping boats as this was previous to the one-design class boats were built. Hence, a rating rule was created, which ended up in the International Rule, adopted in 1906 and revised in 1919. In the present day, one of the most rapidly growing areas in the field of sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are built to standard requirements in length, beam, sail area, and other elements (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing for those boats can be held on an even par with no handicapping necessary. A great example is the standard International America’s Cup Class taken on for yachts in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

As long as yachting was an activity primarily for the nobility and the wealthy, money was no problem, and the size of boats increased, in both length and weight. The promotion and popularity of smaller craft 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) sailed single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray made plain the seaworthiness of less sizeable craft. Following this in the 20th century, notably after World War II, smaller racing and recreational craft became commonplace, 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
Following the decade 1840–50, when steam began to replace sail power in public craft, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were favoured increasingly in pleasure yachts. Large power yachts were furthered to a high standard, and long-distance sailing became a preferred activity of the rich. The earliest power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; they then gave way to boats powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller type of propulsion. As in the case of naval and merchant boats, auxiliaries possessing both sail and power were the yacht standard for many years. By the second half of the 20th century, several yachts were still auxiliaries, but the majority were exclusively power yachts with gasoline or diesel engines.

During the last decade of the 19th century there was a boom in the construction of large steam yachts. Conspicuous 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 over 150. The Mayflower, purchased by the United States Navy in 1898, was the official yacht of the president of the United States until 1929 and saw active service in World War II.

As bigger and better quality internal-combustion engines were created, many large boats were using them for power. The establishment of the diesel engine, with heavy oil for fuel, advanced for World War I. From the decade after, bigger power-yacht creation grew, reaching a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. In that time the best auxiliary yacht built was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The building of large power boats fell away from 1932, and the trend from then was toward smaller, less pricey boats. After World War II, a lot of small naval boats were sold to private owners for conversion to yachts. By the late 20th century, yachting had become a globally beloved sport enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen individually manning and upkeeping their own small leisure boats. The popularity of yachts and sailors is increasing steadily, not only in the traditional areas along the beach but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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