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As the Dutch found preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the initial yacht became a leisure craft used mostly by royalty and secondly by the burghers for the canals as well as the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing yachts 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 throne in 1660, the city of Amsterdam sent him a 20-metre (66-foot) pleasure 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, sovereign 1685–88), ordered for additional yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and returning, on a £100 wager. Yachting rose as classy among the affluent and nobility, but after that time the fashion did not last.

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

Yacht racing began in some stipulated method on the Thames in the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland instigated the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV rose to monarchy in 1820, it was named 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 organisation had been started 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, also 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 social life was wonderful. Ultimately Royal Yachting Club boats were raised in size to over 350 tons.

In North America, yachting began with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and continued when the English held control. Sailing was for the most part for fun and reached its high point in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which cruised on the Mediterranean Sea and set a minimum of luxury and sophistication for the later yachts in those waters from the late 19th century. The first continuing American yacht organisation, the Detroit Boat Club, was started in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens instigated the New York Yacht Club aboard his schooner Gimcrack.

Kinds of sailboats
Early sailing yachts took the style of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through the later half of the 19th century. The design of large yachts was initially heavily impacted by the success of America, which was designed by George Steers for a group started by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) found its namesake after its win at Cowes in 1851. Earlier yachts were not designed and built in today’s sense, with only a model being used. Not until the second half of the 19th century did what was called naval architecture come into action. Not until the 1920s did the use of the science of aerodynamics do for the design of sails and rigging what it had already done for hulls.

Because almost all sailboats had been individually built, there arose a desire for handicapping boats before the one-design class boats were made. Therefore, a rating rule was decreed, which ended up in the International Rule, adopted in 1906 and revised in 1919. Today, one of the fastest growing 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 aspects (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing such boats can be held on an even playing field with no handicapping required. A great example is the uniform International America’s Cup Class taken on board for participants in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

So long as yachting belonged largely for the royal and the wealthy, money was no object, and the size of boats developed, in both length and weight. The promotion and desire of smaller yachts happened 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 trip around the world (1895–98) led single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray proved the seaworthiness of less sizeable yachts. Thereafter in the 20th century, particularly after World War II, smaller racing and recreational craft became commonplace, down to the dinghy, a preferred 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
After the decade 1840–50, when steam started to emulate sail power in public craft, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly used in leisure yachts. Bigger power yachts were developed to a high element, and long-distance travel turned into a favoured occupation of the rich. The first power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; they then gave way to yachts powered by the completely submerged screw or propeller sort of propulsion. As in the case of naval and merchant yachts, auxiliaries possessing both sail and power were the yacht fashion for a number of years. By the later half of the 20th century, many yachts were still auxiliaries, but the larger part were only power yachts that had gasoline or diesel engines.

From the last decade of the 19th century there was a boom in the construction of more sizeable steam yachts. In particular 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 more than 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 during World War II.

As larger and more dependable internal-combustion engines were created, many large boats began using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, using heavy oil for fuel, was furthered from World War I. In the decade following that, bigger power-yacht building blossomed, climaxing in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. During that point the best auxiliary yacht constructed was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The manufacture of bigger power yachts fell away from 1932, and the style thereafter was toward smaller, less pricey craft. After World War II, lots of small naval craft were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. By the late 20th century, yachting has become a widespread popular sport enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen personally owning and keeping their own small pleasure boats. The number of boats and yachtsmen increased steadily, not only in the traditional areas by the beach but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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