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As the Dutch came to dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht had been a pleasure craft used initially by royalty and later by the burghers for the canals and the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Yacht racing was incidental, coming out of private matches. 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) pleasure 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), made other yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and returning, on a £100 wager. Yachting rose as fashionable for the affluent and aristocracy, but after that point the habit did not last.

The first yacht club in the British Isles, the Water Club, was instigated around about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard group, and had great naval panoply and formality. The closest thing to racing boats was the “chase,” for which the “fleet” pursued an imaginary enemy. The club went on, mostly as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, when merging with other societies, it became the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).

Yacht racing was first seen in some organized manner on the Thames around 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 came to be called the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded after a racing fight, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht society had been initiated 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 site of British yacht racing. The association at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, also at the rise of George IV. All members were required to have boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing matches for high bids were held, and the social life was wonderful. Eventually 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 had control. Sailing was largely for leisure and found its epitome in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which traveled on the Mediterranean Sea and established a minimum of luxury and sophistication for the later yachts in those waters from the late 19th century. The first enduring American yacht association, the Detroit Boat Club, was instigated in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens began the New York Yacht Club while aboard his schooner Gimcrack.

Kinds of sailboats
Early sailing yachts took the lines of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through the later half of the 19th century. The craft of sizeable yachts was originally largely put upon by the victory of America, which was designed by George Steers for a syndicate started 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. Earlier yachts were not designed and crafted in today’s sense, with merely a model for an outline. Not until the later half of the 19th century did what was known as naval architecture come into action. Not until the 1920s did the application of the science of aerodynamics do for the structure of sails and rigging what such study had previously done for hulls.

Because nearly all sailboats had to be individually custom-built, there was a desire for handicapping boats before the one-design class boats were built. Thus, a rating rule was created, which ended up in the International Rule, accepted in 1906 and amended in 1919. Today, one of the most rapidly growing areas in the field of sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are created to standard specifications 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 perfect example is the standard International America’s Cup Class taken on board for yachts in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

For the time that yachting belonged mostly for the nobility and the wealthy, cost was no object, and the size of boats grew, in both length and weight. The promotion and popularity of smaller craft happened 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 trip around the world (1895–98) led single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray proved the value of smaller yachts. Thereafter in the 20th century, particularly after World War II, smaller racing and leisure craft became more popular, down to the dinghy, a popular 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
Post the decade 1840–50, when steam started to replace sail power in commercial vessels, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were used increasingly in leisure vessels. Large power yachts were developed to a high degree, and long-distance cruising was a fond occupation of the rich. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; these then gave way to boats powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. As in the case of naval and merchant boats, auxiliaries possessing both sail and power were the yacht archetype for a number of years. By the later half of the 20th century, several yachts were still auxiliaries, but the large part were only power yachts with gasoline or diesel engines.

From the last decade of the 19th century there was a rise in the construction of more sizeable steam yachts. In particular of these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, containing triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was sailed 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 for World War II.

As more sizeable and better quality internal-combustion engines were produced, many bigger boats began using them for power. The establishment of the diesel engine, with heavy oil for fuel, advanced from World War I. During the decade after that, bigger power-yacht building grew, hitting a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. From that point the best auxiliary yacht manufactured was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The construction of big power craft lessened after 1932, and the trend from then was toward smaller, less pricey boats. After World War II, lots of small naval craft were sold to private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting had become a widespread loved sport enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen personally sailing and upkeeping their own small pleasure yachts. The amount of craft and owners has increased steadily, not only in the traditional locations by the sea but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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