As the Dutch rose to dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the early yacht had been a pleasure craft used mostly by royalty and then 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 matches. English yachting started 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 sent him 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, ruled 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 rich and royalty, but after that period the trend did not last.

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

Yacht racing began in some stipulated manner on the Thames about the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland funded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV came to monarchy in 1820, it was then named the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded with a racing fight, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht group had been formed 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 perpetual site of British racing. The society at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, also at the ascension of George IV. All members were required to possess boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing races for large stakes were held, and the club life was wonderful. Eventually Royal Yachting Club boats were raised in size to more than 350 tons.

In North America, yachting began with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and went on when the English gained power. Sailing was for the most part for fun and rose to its high point in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which traveled on the Mediterranean Sea and established a benchmark of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in the area from the late 19th century. The first continuing American yacht society, the Detroit Boat Club, was started in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens began the New York Yacht Club while aboard his schooner Gimcrack.

Kinds of sailboats
The Early sailing yachts took the style of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century until the latter half of the 19th century. The craft of bigger yachts was originally greatly put upon by the win of America, which was designed by George Steers for a club led by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) had its namesake after its win at Cowes in 1851. Earlier yachts were not designed and crafted in today’s sense, with merely a model for an outline. Not until the latter half of the 19th century did what was called naval architecture come into being. Not until the 1920s did the application of the science of aerodynamics do for the design of sails and rigging what such study had previously done for hulls.

Because nearly all sailboats had been individually custom-built, there arose a desire for handicapping boats as this was before the one-design class boats were made. Therefore, a rating rule was created, which resulted in the International Rule, accepted in 1906 and amended in 1919. Today, one of the rapidly flourishing areas in sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are built to standard requirements in length, beam, sail area, and other elements (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing between these boats can be had on an even basis with no handicapping at all. A great example is the uniform 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 nobility and the affluent, expense was no issue, and the size of boats increased, in both length and weight. The ascendancy and popularity of smaller boats came in the latter 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 journey around the world (1895–98) led single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray demonstrated the value of small yachts. Thereafter in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and recreational craft became more popular, down to the dinghy, a favourite training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, boats of less than 3 m were traveled in single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.

Kinds of power yachts
Post the decade 1840–50, in which steam started to take the place of sail power in public boats, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were employed increasingly in personal boats. Bigger power yachts were progressed to a high degree, and long-distance cruising became a favourite activity of the affluent. The earliest power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; they then gave rise to those powered by the completely submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. As in the case of naval and merchant yachts, auxiliaries possessing both sail and power were the yacht archetype for many years. By the later half of the 20th century, several yachts were still auxiliaries, but the majority were only power yachts that had gasoline or diesel engines.

During the last decade of the 19th century there was a boom in the design of more sizeable steam yachts. Notably of these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, that had triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was sailed 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 larger and more dependable internal-combustion engines were produced, many big craft were using them for power. The establishment of the diesel engine, with heavy oil for fuel, progressed in World War I. During the decade after that, bigger power-yacht building grew, climaxing in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. From that period the best auxiliary yacht constructed was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The building of big power yachts lessened from 1932, and the fashion thereafter was for smaller, less costly yachts. From World War II, lots of small naval vessels were bought by private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting had become a globally loved sport enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen personally sailing and maintaining their own small leisure yachts. The number of boats and sailors has increased steadily, not only in the traditional areas by the beach but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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