As the Dutch rose to preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the early yacht had been a leisure craft used mostly by royalty and secondly by the burghers on the canals and the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Yacht racing was incidental, borne from private challenges. English yachting started with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his restoration to the English monarchy in 1660, the city of Amsterdam presented him with a 20-metre (66-foot) pleasure 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, ruled 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 was found to be fashionable with the rich and aristocracy, but after that period the habit did not last.

The first yacht association in the British Isles, the Water Club, was started in about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard organization, and held great naval panoply and gravity. The closest thing to racing boats was the “chase,” for which the “fleet” pursued an imagined enemy. The club persisted, for the large part as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, by merging with other societies, it was known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).

Yacht racing began in some ordered fashion on the Thames about the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland funded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV ascended to the throne in 1820, it was 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 association had been initiated 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 location of British yacht racing. The club at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, likewise at the rise of George IV. Every member was required to own boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing tests for great bets were held, and the club life was wonderful. Eventually Royal Yachting Club boats grew in size to bigger than 350 tons.

In North America, yachting started with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and continued when the English held power. Sailing was largely for pleasure and rose to its high point in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which traveled on the Mediterranean Sea and created a minimum of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in that area from the late 19th century. The first enduring American yacht club, the Detroit Boat Club, was started in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens instigated the New York Yacht Club while aboard his schooner Gimcrack.

Kinds of sailboats
The Early sailing yachts were within the design of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century until the later half of the 19th century. The style of bigger yachts was originally largely affected by the success of America, which was designed by George Steers for a club started by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) was named after its success at Cowes in 1851. Earlier yachts were not designed and crafted in a contemporary sense, with just a model for an outline. Not until the later half of the 19th century did what was known as naval architecture come into being. Not until the 1920s did the application of the research of aerodynamics do for the craft of sails and rigging what such science had earlier done for hulls.

Because most of all sailboats had to be individually custom-built, there arose a need for handicapping boats previous to the one-design class boats were made. Hence, a rating rule was created, which is found in the International Rule, accepted in 1906 and revised in 1919. In modern times, one of the rapidly flourishing areas in the sailing industry is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are built to single specifications in length, beam, sail area, and other elements (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing for those boats can be had on an even playing field with no handicapping necessary. A perfect example is the generic International America’s Cup Class taken on for racers in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

For the time that yachting was done largely for the royal and the affluent, expense was no issue, and the size of boats developed, in both length and weight. The promotion and desire of smaller boats came in the second 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 trip around the world (1895–98) sailed single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray proved the value of smaller yachts. Later in the 20th century, particularly after World War II, smaller racing and leisure boats became more popular, down to the dinghy, a preferred 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
Post the decade 1840–50, at which point steam began to emulate sail power in market craft, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were favoured increasingly in pleasure yachts. Sizeable power yachts were progressed to a high standard, and long-distance cruising was a preferred activity of the wealthy. The first power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then gave rise to those powered by the fully 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 standard for many years. By the second half of the 20th century, a lot of yachts were still auxiliaries, but the larger part were solely power yachts that had gasoline or diesel engines.

During the last decade of the 19th century there was a push in the manufacture of large steam yachts. Conspicuous among these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, that had triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was manned by a crew of at least 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 was used in active service in World War II.

As larger and better quality internal-combustion engines were created, many large yachts started using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, using heavy oil for fuel, progressed for World War I. During the decade after that, bigger power-yacht building blossomed, hitting a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. In that point the biggest auxiliary yacht constructed was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The building of bigger power boats declined from 1932, and the style after that was in preference of smaller, less expensive boats. 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 has become a globally beloved activity enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen individually owning and upkeeping their own small recreational boats. The number of yachts and owners is increasing steadily, not only in the traditional areas on the sea but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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