As the Dutch rose to preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the early yacht became a pleasure craft used initially by royalty and secondly by the burghers on the canals and then in the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Yacht racing was incidental, arising as private matches. English yachting originated with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his restoration to the English throne in 1660, the city of Amsterdam gave him a 20-metre (66-foot) pleasure 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, ruled 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 rose as classy among the wealthy and nobility, but after that point the fashion did not last.

The first yacht group in the British Isles, the Water Club, was started around about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard group, and held much naval panoply and gravity. The closest thing to a race was the “chase,” for which the “fleet” pursued a fictional enemy. The club persisted, mostly as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, after merging with other clubs, it was known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).

Yacht racing was seen in some ordered 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 rose to monarchy in 1820, it was known as 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 organisation had been initiated 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 continuing site of British yachting. The association at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, likewise at the rise of George IV. All members were required to possess boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing tests for great bids were held, and the social life was superlative. Ultimately Royal Yachting Club boats increased in size to more than 350 tons.

In North America, yachting started with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and went on when the English gained power. Sailing was mostly for pleasure and rose to its epitome 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 those waters from the late 19th century. The first enduring American yacht society, the Detroit Boat Club, was instigated in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens instigated the New York Yacht Club aboard his schooner Gimcrack.

Kinds of sailboats
The first sailing yachts took the design of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century until the later half of the 19th century. The craft of bigger yachts was initially heavily impacted by the success of America, which was designed by George Steers for a group started by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) was named after its win at Cowes in 1851. The first yachts were not designed and crafted in a contemporary sense, with only a model used. Not until the later half of the 19th century did what was called naval architecture come into action. Not until the 1920s did the use of the science of aerodynamics do for the structure of sails and rigging what it had done earlier for hulls.

Because most of all sailboats had to be individually manufactured, there was a need for handicapping boats as this was before the one-design class boats were built. Hence, a rating rule was created, which is found in the International Rule, adopted in 1906 and edited in 1919. Today, one of the fastest blossoming areas in the sailing industry is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are created to single requirements in length, beam, sail area, and other aspects (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing for these boats can be done on an even par with no handicapping at all. A perfect example is the uniform International America’s Cup Class taken on for yachts in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

As long as yachting belonged primarily for the aristocracy and the wealthy, money was no object, and the size of boats grew, in both length and weight. The rise and desire of smaller yachts happened in the latter 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 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 hardiness of small craft. Thereafter in the 20th century, notably after World War II, smaller racing and leisure yachts became more popular, down to the dinghy, a popular training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, craft of less than 3 m were traveled in single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.

Kinds of power yachts
Post the decade 1840–50, when steam began to emulate sail power in public boats, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were employed more and more in pleasure boats. Sizeable power yachts were furthered to a high standard, and long-distance sailing was a favourite occupation of the rich. The earliest power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then gave way to boats powered by the completely submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. Like naval and merchant craft, auxiliaries possessing both sail and power were the yacht standard for a number of years. By the second half of the 20th century, many yachts were still auxiliaries, but the larger part were only power yachts containing gasoline or diesel engines.

From the last decade of the 19th century there was a push in the design 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 manned by a crew of more than 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 in World War II.

As bigger and more dependable internal-combustion engines were created, many bigger craft started using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, was furthered for World War I. In the decade following that, big power-yacht building grew, reaching a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. From that period the best auxiliary yacht manufactured was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The construction of bigger power craft lessened from 1932, and the fashion after that was toward smaller, less costly yachts. From World War II, lots of small naval boats were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. In the late 20th century, yachting is a globally popular activity enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen personally sailing and maintaining their own small leisure yachts. The amount of craft and sailors increased steadily, not only in the traditional locations along the sea but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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