As the Dutch rose to preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht became a leisure craft used first by royalty and secondly by the burghers for the canals and then in the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing yachts 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 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), 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 punt. Yachting rose as fashionable for the affluent and nobility, but after that period the fashion 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 held great naval panoply and gravity. The closest thing to racing was the “chase,” for which the “fleet” pursued an imaginary enemy. The club endured, largely as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, by conglomerating with other clubs, it became the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).

Yacht racing began in some ordered fashion 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 was called the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded following a racing dispute, 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 continuing setting of British yachting. The association at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, again at the ascension of George IV. Each member was required to possess boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing tests for great bids were held, and the club life was lovely. Eventually Royal Yachting Club boats grew 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 power. Sailing was for the most part for pleasure and rose to its high point in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which sailed 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 continuing American yacht group, 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 first sailing yachts were within the design of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through the later half of the 19th century. The design of sizeable yachts was first heavily affected by the win of America, which was created by George Steers for a association headed by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) found its namesake after its win at Cowes in 1851. Early yachts were not designed and built in the modern sense, with just a model for an outline. Not until the second half of the 19th century did what was known as naval architecture come into action. Not until the 1920s did the application of the study of aerodynamics do for the design of sails and rigging what science had already done for hulls.

Because most of all sailboats had to be individually built, there was a desire for handicapping boats before the one-design class boats were made. Hence, a rating rule came into being, which resulted in the International Rule, adopted in 1906 and amended in 1919. In the present day, one of the rapidly growing 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 areas (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing between these boats can be had on an even keel with no handicapping required. A prime example is the standard International America’s Cup Class taken on for participants in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

As long as yachting was an activity mostly for the nobility and the affluent, cost was no problem, and the size of boats increased, in both length and weight. The promotion and desire of smaller yachts 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) led single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray proved the seaworthiness of smaller boats. Thereafter in the 20th century, notably after World War II, smaller racing and recreational boats 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 traveled in single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.

Kinds of power yachts
Post the decade 1840–50, in which steam began to take the place of sail power in market craft, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly used in pleasure yachts. Large power yachts were progressed to a high degree, and long-distance travel became a fond activity of the affluent. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; these then gave way to yachts powered by the fully submerged screw or propeller sort of propulsion. As in the case of naval and merchant craft, auxiliaries with both sail and power were the yacht fashion for many years. By the later half of the 20th century, many yachts were still auxiliaries, but the large part were solely power yachts containing gasoline or diesel engines.

From the last decade of the 19th century there was a push in the manufacture of more sizeable steam yachts. Conspicuous of these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, that had triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was operated by a crew of at least 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 in World War II.

As larger and more reliable internal-combustion engines were created, many large boats started using them for power. The establishment of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, advanced in World War I. In the decade following, bigger power-yacht creation flourished, reaching a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. In that time the largest auxiliary yacht constructed was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The building of big power craft fell away in 1932, and the fashion after that was in preference of smaller, less pricey boats. From World War II, a lot of small naval boats were sold to private owners for conversion to yachts. By the late 20th century, yachting is a internationally popular competition enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen individually owning and maintaining their own small leisure craft. The number of craft and owners is increasing steadily, not only in the traditional places on the beach but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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