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As the Dutch rose to preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the initial yacht became a pleasure craft used initially by royalty and later by the burghers in the canals and then in the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing was incidental, coming out of private challenges. English yachting originated with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his return 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 named Mary. Charles and his brother James, the duke of York (James II, sovereign 1685–88), built more yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and back, on a £100 wager. Yachting was found to be popular among the affluent and royalty, but after that time 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 organization, and had large naval panoply and gravity. The closest thing to racing was the “chase,” for which the “fleet” pursued an imagined enemy. The club persisted, for the large part as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, by merging with other groups, it was known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).

Yacht racing was seen in some stipulated manner on the Thames in the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland instigated the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV came to the throne in 1820, it was named the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded with a racing dispute, 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 sponsorship made the Solent - the strait between the mainland and the Isle of Wight - the continuing site of British yacht racing. The organisation at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, likewise at the rise of George IV. Every member was required to possess boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing tests for great stakes were held, and the society life was splendid. Eventually Royal Yachting Club boats grew in size to over 350 tons.

In North America, yachting began with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and went on when the English held control. Sailing was mostly for fun and rose to its apogee in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which traveled on the Mediterranean Sea and established a standard of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in that area from the late 19th century. The first continuing American yacht organisation, the Detroit Boat Club, was started in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens founded the New York Yacht Club while 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 second half of the 19th century. The style of sizeable yachts was first heavily affected by the victory of America, which was drawn by George Steers for a group headed 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. The first yachts were not designed and built in a contemporary sense, with merely a model used. Not until the second half of the 19th century did what was called naval architecture come about. Not until the 1920s did the employment of the science of aerodynamics do for the structure of sails and rigging what such study had already done for hulls.

Because almost all sailboats had to be individually manufactured, there arose a requirement for handicapping boats before the one-design class boats were made. Thus, a rating rule was written, which resulted in the International Rule, accepted in 1906 and edited in 1919. Today, 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 single dimensions in length, beam, sail area, and other elements (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing for such boats can be done on an even keel with no handicapping at all. A great example is the standard International America’s Cup Class taken on board for racers in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

As long as yachting was done mostly for the nobility and the rich, cost was no issue, and the size of boats increased, in both length and weight. The promotion and desire of smaller boats came in the second half of the 19th century out of 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 made plain the value of small yachts. Thereafter in the 20th century, particularly after World War II, smaller racing and leisure craft became more popular, down to the dinghy, a favourite training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, craft of less than 3 m were setting sail single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.

Kinds of power yachts
Post the decade 1840–50, during which steam began to replace sail power in market vessels, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly favoured in leisure vessels. Bigger power yachts were progressed to a high element, and long-distance cruising became a preferred occupation of the affluent. The first power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; these then gave way to yachts powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller sort of propulsion. As well as naval and merchant yachts, auxiliaries carrying both sail and power were the yacht archetype for many years. By the later half of the 20th century, a lot of yachts were still auxiliaries, but the larger part were solely power yachts containing gasoline or diesel engines.

During the last decade of the 19th century there was a boom in the manufacture of more sizeable steam yachts. Conspicuous among 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 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 saw active service in World War II.

As bigger and more dependable internal-combustion engines were produced, many big craft started using them for power. The establishment of the diesel engine, with heavy oil for fuel, advanced during World War I. During the decade after that, bigger power-yacht building blossomed, reaching a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. During that period the best auxiliary yacht constructed was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The construction of bigger power boats declined after 1932, and the fashion from then was for smaller, less costly boats. After World War II, lots of small naval craft were bought by private owners for conversion to yachts. By the late 20th century, yachting is a internationally loved activity enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen individually manning and maintaining their own small pleasure craft. The amount of boats 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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