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As the Dutch came to dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht was a pleasure craft used mostly by royalty and later by the burghers for the canals and the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing yachts was incidental, coming out of private games. English yachting started with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his restoration to the English throne in 1660, the city of Amsterdam sent him a 20-metre (66-foot) leisure boat with a beam (maximum width) of 5.6 m (18 feet), which he named 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 back, on a £100 bet. Yachting rose as fashionable for the rich and royalty, but after that period the fashion did not last.

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

Yacht racing was seen in some ordered method on the Thames in the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland funded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV rose to monarchy in 1820, it was then named the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded with 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 patronage made the Solent - the strait between the mainland and the Isle of Wight - the continuing site of British yachting. The club 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 tests for high bets were held, and the social life was wonderful. It came to be that the 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 continued when the English held control. Sailing was largely for leisure and rose to its apogee in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which sailed on the Mediterranean Sea and created a standard of luxury and sophistication for the later yachts in those waters from the late 19th century. The first persisting American yacht organisation, the Detroit Boat Club, was formed 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 design of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through to the second half of the 19th century. The design of large yachts was initially largely put upon by the victory of America, which was drawn by George Steers for a group led by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) was named after its victory at Cowes in 1851. The first yachts were not designed and crafted in the modern sense, with only a model used. Not until the latter half of the 19th century did what was labeled naval architecture come into being. Not until the 1920s did the use of the research of aerodynamics do for the craft of sails and rigging what such study had done earlier for hulls.

Because most of all sailboats had to be individually custom-built, there was a need for handicapping boats before the one-design class boats were made. Therefore, a rating rule was written, which is found in the International Rule, accepted in 1906 and edited in 1919. In the present day, one of the fastest blossoming areas in the sailing industry is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are created to single specifications in length, beam, sail area, and other areas (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing for those boats can be done on an even basis with no handicapping at all. A perfect example is the generic International America’s Cup Class taken on board for participants in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

For the time that yachting was an activity primarily for the royal and the rich, expense was no issue, and the size of boats developed, in both length and weight. The rise and desire of smaller yachts happened in the latter 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 proved the seaworthiness of smaller yachts. Later in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and pleasure yachts became more common, down to the dinghy, a preferred 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, during which steam was set to emulate sail power in market vessels, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly favoured in leisure craft. Sizeable power yachts were furthered to a high standard, and long-distance cruising became a favourite pastime of the wealthy. The first power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then gave way to those powered by the fully submerged screw or propeller type of propulsion. As well as naval and merchant vessels, auxiliaries possessing both sail and power were the yacht fashion for many years. By the later half of the 20th century, many yachts were still auxiliaries, but the larger part were solely power yachts containing gasoline or diesel engines.

From the last decade of the 19th century there was a push in the manufacture of more sizeable steam yachts. Conspicuous of these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, that had triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was operated 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 saw active service for World War II.

As larger and more reliable internal-combustion engines were produced, many big boats started using them for power. The creation of the diesel engine, using heavy oil for fuel, was furthered in World War I. During the decade following that, big power-yacht manufacture flourished, climaxing in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. In that point the largest auxiliary yacht manufactured was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The manufacture of larger power yachts fell away from 1932, and the style from then was toward smaller, less costly craft. From World War II, lots of small naval vessels were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. By the late 20th century, yachting has become a globally loved competition enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen who are actually manning and upkeeping their own small recreational boats. The amount of yachts and sailors has increased steadily, not only in the traditional locations by the sea but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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