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As the Dutch found dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the early yacht became a leisure craft used mostly by royalty and then by the burghers for the canals as well as the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Yacht racing was incidental, arising as private games. English yachting started with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his restoration to the English royalty in 1660, the city of Amsterdam presented him with 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), ordered for more yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and returning, on a £100 punt. Yachting rose as classy among the affluent and aristocracy, but after that point the trend did not last.

The first yacht association in the British Isles, the Water Club, was formed at about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard association, and held great naval panoply and formality. The closest thing to racing was the “chase,” for which the “fleet” pursued an imaginary enemy. The club endured, largely 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 was seen in some organized fashion 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 monarchy in 1820, it came to be called the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded after a racing fight, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht association 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, also at the rise of George IV. All members were required to possess boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing matches for high stakes were held, and the club life was superlative. Eventually Royal Yachting Club boats were raised in size to over 350 tons.

In North America, yachting started with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and persisted when the English had control. Sailing was mostly for pleasure and rose to its apogee in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which traveled 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 enduring American yacht club, the Detroit Boat Club, was started in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens founded the New York Yacht Club while on board his schooner Gimcrack.

Kinds of sailboats
The first sailing yachts took the lines of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through to the second half of the 19th century. The craft of sizeable yachts was initially greatly affected by the win of America, which was created by George Steers for a club 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. The first yachts were not designed and crafted in a contemporary sense, with just a model used. Not until the later half of the 19th century did what was known as naval architecture come about. Not until the 1920s did the employment of the science of aerodynamics do for the craft of sails and rigging what it had already done for hulls.

Because almost all sailboats had been individually built, there was a need for handicapping boats as this was before the one-design class boats were built. Thus, a rating rule was written, which ended up in the International Rule, taken on in 1906 and revised in 1919. Today, one of the fastest flourishing areas in the sailing industry is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are manufactured to the same specifications in length, beam, sail area, and other elements (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing such boats can be done on an even basis with no handicapping at all. A perfect example is the uniform International America’s Cup Class adopted for participants in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

For the time that yachting belonged largely for the nobility and the wealthy, money was no object, and the size of boats developed, in both length and weight. The promotion and desire of smaller boats happened in the latter half of the 19th century out of 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 demonstrated the value of small boats. Later in the 20th century, notably after World War II, smaller racing and pleasure craft became more popular, down to the dinghy, a popular 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, when steam began to emulate sail power in public boats, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were employed increasingly in personal vessels. Sizeable power yachts were furthered to a high element, and long-distance travel turned into a favourite pastime of the rich. The earliest power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; they then gave rise to yachts powered by the completely submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. Like naval and merchant craft, auxiliaries with both sail and power were the yacht archetype for several years. By the second half of the 20th century, several yachts were still auxiliaries, but the larger part were solely power yachts that had gasoline or diesel engines.

From the last decade of the 19th century there was a push in the manufacture of bigger 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 sailed 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 for World War II.

As bigger and more dependable internal-combustion engines were developed, many big yachts started using them for power. The establishment of the diesel engine, with heavy oil for fuel, was furthered in World War I. In the decade following that, bigger power-yacht manufacture grew, reaching a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. During that point the largest auxiliary yacht built was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The building of larger power yachts declined from 1932, and the fashion from then was for smaller, less pricey craft. From World War II, a lot of small naval vessels were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. By the late 20th century, yachting had become a widespread popular competition enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen who are actually manning and maintaining their own small pleasure yachts. The popularity of craft and sailors increased steadily, not only in the traditional places on the sea but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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