As the Dutch came to preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the initial yacht became a leisure craft used first 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, borne from private challenges. English yachting started with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his reaffirmation 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 then named Mary. Charles and his brother James, the duke of York (James II, reigned 1685–88), built additional yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and returning, on a £100 bet. Yachting rose as fashionable with the affluent and nobility, but after that period the fashion did not last.

The first yacht group in the British Isles, the Water Club, was started at about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard association, and held large naval panoply and gravity. The closest thing to a race was the “chase,” in which the “fleet” pursued an imaginary enemy. The club persisted, largely as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, after merging with other clubs, it became known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).

Yacht racing was seen in some stipulated 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 rose to monarchy in 1820, it was named 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 club had been formed 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 perpetual site of British racing. The society at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, likewise at the accession of George IV. Each member was required to have boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing tests for great bids were held, and the club life was wonderful. 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 persisted when the English took power. Sailing was for the most part for fun and found its epitome in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which cruised on the Mediterranean Sea and created a standard of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in the area from the late 19th century. The first enduring American yacht organisation, the Detroit Boat Club, was formed in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens instigated the New York Yacht Club while on board his schooner Gimcrack.

Kinds of sailboats
Early sailing yachts were within the style of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through to the second half of the 19th century. The style of large yachts was first greatly impacted by the victory of America, which was designed 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 success at Cowes in 1851. Earlier yachts were not designed and manufactured in today’s sense, with just a model being used. Not until the later half of the 19th century did what was called naval architecture come into being. Not until the 1920s did the employment of the research of aerodynamics do for the structure of sails and rigging what such science had previously done for hulls.

Because most of all sailboats had been individually manufactured, there arose a desire for handicapping boats as this was previous to the one-design class boats were made. Thus, a rating rule was decreed, which is found in the International Rule, taken on in 1906 and revised in 1919. In the present day, one of the most rapidly flourishing areas in the sailing industry is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are created to the same dimensions in length, beam, sail area, and other elements (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing for these boats can be held on an even playing field with no handicapping necessary. A perfect example is the standard International America’s Cup Class adopted for racers in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

For the time that yachting was done mostly for the aristocracy and the affluent, cost was no problem, and the size of boats increased, in both length and weight. The promotion and popularity of smaller yachts came in the later 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) led single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray proved the seaworthiness of small yachts. Thereafter in the 20th century, particularly after World War II, smaller racing and recreational craft became commonplace, down to the dinghy, a favourite 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, in which steam began to emulate sail power in commercial craft, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were employed increasingly in pleasure boats. Sizeable power yachts were furthered to a high standard, and long-distance sailing was a favoured occupation of the wealthy. The first power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then made way to yachts powered by the completely submerged screw or propeller sort of propulsion. Like naval and merchant boats, auxiliaries with both sail and power were the yacht standard for many years. By the second half of the 20th century, many yachts were still auxiliaries, but the majority were exclusively power yachts that had gasoline or diesel engines.

In the last decade of the 19th century there was a rise in the design of bigger steam yachts. Notably of these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, with triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was manned by a crew of over 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 bigger and more reliable internal-combustion engines were developed, many bigger yachts started using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, advanced from World War I. During the decade that followed, big power-yacht creation blossomed, reaching a climax 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 building of larger power boats lessened from 1932, and the fashion thereafter was in preference of smaller, less expensive craft. From World War II, a lot of small naval vessels were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting has become a globally loved activity enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen personally manning and maintaining their own small recreational yachts. The amount of yachts and yachtsmen has increased steadily, not only in the traditional places along the beach but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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