As the Dutch rose to preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht was a pleasure craft used first by royalty and later by the burghers for the canals and then in the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing yachts was incidental, borne from private challenges. English yachting originated with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his restoration 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 called 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 the same way back, on a £100 punt. Yachting was found to be fashionable for the wealthy and aristocracy, but after that point 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, with great naval panoply and rigour. The closest thing to racing boats was the “chase,” when the “fleet” pursued an imagined enemy. The club endured, largely as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, when merging with other clubs, it was known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).

Yacht racing was first seen in some stipulated manner on the Thames in the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland funded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV ascended to monarchy in 1820, it came to be known as the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded after a racing argument, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht association had been started 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 continued site of British yachting. The association at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, again at the ascension of George IV. All members were required to own boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing races for great bets 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 persisted when the English had power. Sailing was for the most part for fun and found its high point in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which traveled on the Mediterranean Sea and established a standard of luxury and sophistication for the later yachts in the area from the late 19th century. The first persisting American yacht society, the Detroit Boat Club, was started in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens began the New York Yacht Club while on board 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 to the second half of the 19th century. The style of bigger yachts was originally greatly affected by the victory of America, which was designed by George Steers for a group headed 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. Early yachts were not designed and manufactured in today’s sense, with just a model used. Not until the later half of the 19th century did what was labeled naval architecture come into action. Not until the 1920s did the employment of the study of aerodynamics do for the craft of sails and rigging what it had done earlier for hulls.

Because almost all sailboats had been individually manufactured, there was a requirement for handicapping boats as this was previous to the one-design class boats were designed. Hence, a rating rule was decreed, which resulted in the International Rule, taken on in 1906 and amended in 1919. In the present day, one of the most rapidly blossoming areas in sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are built to the same dimensions in length, beam, sail area, and other aspects (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing between those boats can be had on an even par with no handicapping necessary. A prime example is the standard International America’s Cup Class taken on for participants in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

For the time that yachting was done mostly for the royal and the wealthy, cost was no problem, and the size of boats increased, in both length and weight. The ascendancy and popularity of smaller boats occurred 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) captained single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray made plain the value of less sizeable craft. Following this in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and leisure craft became commonplace, down to the dinghy, a favourite training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, yachts of less than 3 m were sailed single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.

Kinds of power yachts
Following the decade 1840–50, when steam was set to replace sail power in public vessels, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were favoured increasingly in personal boats. Bigger power yachts were furthered to a high element, and long-distance sailing turned into a fond occupation of the well off. The earliest power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; these then gave way to boats powered by the fully submerged screw or propeller sort of propulsion. Like naval and merchant yachts, auxiliaries possessing both sail and power were the yacht archetype for a number of years. By the latter half of the 20th century, several yachts were still auxiliaries, but the majority were exclusively power yachts with gasoline or diesel engines.

In the last decade of the 19th century there was a rise in the manufacture of bigger steam yachts. Conspicuous within 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, commissioned 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 created, many large boats began using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, advanced from World War I. From the decade after that, big power-yacht building grew, hitting a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. In that time the biggest auxiliary yacht manufactured was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The building of larger power yachts declined in 1932, and the fashion after that was in preference of smaller, less expensive craft. From World War II, a lot of small naval craft were sold to private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting had become a widespread beloved competition enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen personally owning and upkeeping their own small pleasure craft. The popularity of craft and sailors is increasing steadily, not only in the traditional locations on the sea but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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