As the Dutch came to dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the initial yacht had been a leisure craft used initially by royalty and then by the burghers on the canals and the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Yacht racing 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 throne 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 named Mary. Charles and his brother James, the duke of York (James II, reigned 1685–88), made additional yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and the same way back, on a £100 wager. Yachting was found to be classy among the wealthy and aristocracy, but after that time the fashion did not last.

The first yacht association in the British Isles, the Water Club, was started around about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard association, with large naval panoply and rigour. The closest thing to a race was the “chase,” in which the “fleet” pursued a fictional enemy. The club endured, largely as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, by joining with other organisations, it became known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).

Yacht racing was first seen in some ordered fashion on the Thames in 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 named the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded following a racing argument, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht organisation had been formed 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 organisation at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, also at the rise of George IV. Each member was required to have boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing races for large bids were held, and the club life was lovely. It came to be that the Royal Yachting Club boats were raised 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 had control. Sailing was largely for leisure and reached its apogee in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which sailed on the Mediterranean Sea and created a standard of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in those waters from the late 19th century. The first enduring American yacht club, the Detroit Boat Club, was formed 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 latter half of the 19th century. The style of sizeable yachts was first heavily put upon by the victory of America, which was created by George Steers for a syndicate headed by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) found its namesake after its success at Cowes in 1851. The first yachts were not designed and built in today’s sense, with only a model used. Not until the later half of the 19th century did what was labeled naval architecture come about. Not until the 1920s did the use of the study of aerodynamics do for the design of sails and rigging what such science had earlier done for hulls.

Because nearly all sailboats had been individually manufactured, there arose a need for handicapping boats as this was before the one-design class boats were designed. Hence, a rating rule was created, which ended up in the International Rule, taken on in 1906 and amended in 1919. Today, 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 built to standard dimensions in length, beam, sail area, and other areas (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing such boats can be had on an even basis with no handicapping required. A perfect example is the generic International America’s Cup Class adopted for yachts in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

As long as yachting was an activity primarily for the nobility and the wealthy, cost was no object, and the size of boats developed, in both length and weight. The promotion and preference 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 proved the value of less sizeable craft. Thereafter in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and pleasure boats became commonplace, down to the dinghy, a popular training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, craft of less than 3 m were setting sail single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.

Kinds of power yachts
After the decade 1840–50, at which point steam was set to replace sail power in commercial vessels, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly employed in leisure yachts. Sizeable power yachts were developed to a high element, and long-distance sailing was a preferred occupation of the well off. The first power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; they 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 possessing both sail and power were the yacht fashion for several years. By the later half of the 20th century, many yachts were still auxiliaries, but the large part were exclusively power yachts that had gasoline or diesel engines.

From the last decade of the 19th century there was a push in the design of more sizeable 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 operated by a crew of more than 150. The Mayflower, commissioned by the United States Navy in 1898, was the official yacht of the president of the United States until 1929 and gave active service in World War II.

As bigger and better quality internal-combustion engines were produced, many bigger boats started using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, using heavy oil for fuel, advanced from World War I. From the decade after that, bigger power-yacht manufacture grew, climaxing in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. In that period the biggest auxiliary yacht manufactured was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The construction of large power craft fell away from 1932, and the fashion from then was in preference of smaller, less pricey yachts. From World War II, lots of small naval craft were bought by private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting had become a globally loved activity enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen personally sailing and keeping their own small recreational boats. The popularity of boats and sailors increased steadily, not only in the traditional locations by the sea but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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