As the Dutch rose to dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the early yacht became a pleasure craft used first by royalty and then by the burghers on the canals and the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Yacht racing was incidental, coming out of private matches. English yachting originated with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his reaffirmation to the English throne in 1660, the city of Amsterdam gave him a 20-metre (66-foot) leisure 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 other 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 with the affluent and royalty, but after that period the trend did not last.

The first yacht association in the British Isles, the Water Club, was instigated at about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard association, and held much naval panoply and formality. The closest thing to racing boats was the “chase,” when the “fleet” pursued an imagined enemy. The club persisted, mostly as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, when joining 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 founded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV came to sovereignty in 1820, it was then called 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 society 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 perpetual location of British yachting. The society at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, again at the rise of George IV. Every member was required to own boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing matches for great bids were held, and the society life was wonderful. It came to be that the Royal Yachting Club boats increased 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 control. Sailing was mostly for leisure and reached its apogee in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which cruised on the Mediterranean Sea and set a standard of luxury and sophistication for the later yachts in that area from the late 19th century. The first enduring American yacht society, the Detroit Boat Club, was formed in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens founded the New York Yacht Club aboard his schooner Gimcrack.

Kinds of sailboats
The Early sailing yachts were within the lines of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century until the later half of the 19th century. The craft of sizeable yachts was originally largely impacted 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.) was named after its success at Cowes in 1851. Earlier yachts were not designed and crafted in a contemporary sense, with only a model used. Not until the second half of the 19th century did what was known as naval architecture come about. Not until the 1920s did the employment 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 was a desire for handicapping boats previous to the one-design class boats were designed. Therefore, a rating rule was created, which ended up in the International Rule, adopted in 1906 and revised in 1919. In modern times, one of the most rapidly blossoming areas in the sailing industry is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are manufactured to the same dimensions in length, beam, sail area, and other areas (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing between those boats can be held on an even basis with no handicapping required. A perfect example is the uniform International America’s Cup Class adopted for racers in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

So long as yachting belonged mostly for the aristocracy and the affluent, cost was no issue, and the size of boats developed, in both length and weight. The rise and preference of smaller craft happened 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) sailed single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray made plain the seaworthiness of small boats. Later in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and pleasure craft became more popular, 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 started to replace sail power in commercial craft, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly employed in leisure boats. Large power yachts were progressed to a high element, and long-distance travel was a fond pastime of the rich. The first power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then gave way to boats powered by the completely submerged screw or propeller type of propulsion. As in the case of naval and merchant boats, auxiliaries with both sail and power were the yacht fashion for several years. By the second half of the 20th century, several yachts were still auxiliaries, but the larger part were solely power yachts containing gasoline or diesel engines.

From the last decade of the 19th century there was a push in the construction of large steam yachts. Conspicuous among 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, bought 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 bigger and more dependable internal-combustion engines were developed, many large craft started using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, progressed in World War I. From the decade following, large power-yacht creation flourished, hitting a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. In that time the biggest auxiliary yacht constructed was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The manufacture of big power yachts declined from 1932, and the fashion after that was in preference of smaller, less pricey yachts. From World War II, many small naval craft were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. In the late 20th century, yachting has become a internationally loved sport enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen individually owning and keeping their own small pleasure craft. The amount of craft and owners is increasing steadily, not only in the traditional locations along the sea but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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