As the Dutch rose to dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the initial yacht became a leisure craft used first by royalty and secondly by the burghers in the canals and the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Yacht racing was incidental, coming out of private challenges. English yachting started 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 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, sovereign 1685–88), made additional yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and returning, on a £100 wager. Yachting became popular among the wealthy and nobility, but after that point the fashion did not last.

The first yacht club in the British Isles, the Water Club, was formed in about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard group, with large naval panoply and rigour. The closest thing to a race was the “chase,” in which the “fleet” pursued a fictional enemy. The club endured, for the large part as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, after conglomerating with other organisations, it became known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).

Yacht racing was seen in some stipulated 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 ascended to the throne in 1820, it came to be called the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded after 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 sponsorship made the Solent – the strait between the mainland and the Isle of Wight – the perpetual site of British yachting. The club at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, again at the accession of George IV. Every member was required to have boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing matches for large bids were held, and the social life was superlative. It came to be that the Royal Yachting Club boats grew in size to bigger than 350 tons.

In North America, yachting was first accomplished with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and went on when the English gained power. Sailing was for the most part for fun and rose to its high point in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which sailed on the Mediterranean Sea and set a benchmark of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in the area from the late 19th century. The first continuing American yacht group, the Detroit Boat Club, was started in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens instigated the New York Yacht Club while on board his schooner Gimcrack.

Kinds of sailboats
The Early sailing yachts took the style of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through the second half of the 19th century. The craft of bigger yachts was originally heavily affected by the win of America, which was designed by George Steers for a club started by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) had its namesake after its victory at Cowes in 1851. The first yachts were not designed and built in the modern sense, with only a model for an outline. Not until the later half of the 19th century did what was labeled naval architecture come into action. Not until the 1920s did the employment of the study of aerodynamics do for the craft of sails and rigging what such science had done earlier for hulls.

Because most of all sailboats were individually custom-built, there was a desire for handicapping boats before the one-design class boats were built. Thus, a rating rule was decreed, which ended up in the International Rule, adopted in 1906 and revised in 1919. Today, one of the most rapidly flourishing 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 elements (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing between these boats can be done on an even par with no handicapping at all. A perfect example is the standard International America’s Cup Class taken on for participants in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

As long as yachting belonged primarily for the aristocracy and the affluent, cost was no problem, and the size of boats grew, in both length and weight. The rise and popularity of smaller craft happened in the later 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) sailed single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray made plain the hardiness of less sizeable craft. Later in the 20th century, particularly after World War II, smaller racing and pleasure boats became more popular, down to the dinghy, a preferred 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
After the decade 1840–50, when steam was set to replace sail power in public boats, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were favoured increasingly in personal yachts. Bigger power yachts were progressed to a high standard, and long-distance cruising was a preferred activity of the affluent. The earliest power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; they then gave rise to yachts powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller sort of propulsion. As well as naval and merchant yachts, auxiliaries with both sail and power were the yacht fashion for several years. By the later half of the 20th century, several yachts were still auxiliaries, but the majority were only power yachts that had gasoline or diesel engines.

From the last decade of the 19th century there was a boom in the design of bigger steam yachts. In particular of 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, purchased by the United States Navy in 1898, was the official yacht of the president of the United States until 1929 and was used in active service for World War II.

As bigger and more dependable internal-combustion engines were created, many large yachts were using them for power. The creation of the diesel engine, using heavy oil for fuel, progressed in World War I. During the decade following that, big power-yacht manufacture grew, reaching a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. In that point the largest auxiliary yacht built was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The construction of big power boats lessened from 1932, and the fashion after that was toward smaller, less pricey yachts. From World War II, many small naval craft were bought by private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting is a internationally popular activity enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen personally owning and upkeeping their own small recreational yachts. The popularity of craft and owners increased steadily, not only in the traditional areas by the beach but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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