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As the Dutch came to dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht was a leisure craft used mostly by royalty and then by the burghers for the canals and then in the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing yachts was incidental, arising as private games. English yachting began with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his reaffirmation to the English monarchy 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 named Mary. Charles and his brother James, the duke of York (James II, reigned 1685–88), ordered for additional yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and returning, on a £100 punt. Yachting rose as fashionable for the rich and royalty, but after that period the trend did not last.

The first yacht group in the British Isles, the Water Club, was formed around about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard group, with great naval panoply and gravity. The closest thing to a race was the “chase,” in which the “fleet” pursued an imaginary enemy. The club endured, mostly as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, by conglomerating with other clubs, it became known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).

Yacht racing was first seen in some organized fashion on the Thames in 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 was known as the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded after a racing argument, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht society had been formed 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 perpetual site of British racing. The society at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, again at the rise of George IV. Each member was required to have boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing matches for great bets were held, and the society life was wonderful. It came to be that the 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 dominance. Sailing was for the most part for fun and reached its epitome in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which cruised on the Mediterranean Sea and set a minimum of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in those waters from the late 19th century. The first enduring American yacht club, the Detroit Boat Club, was formed in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens founded the New York Yacht Club while aboard his schooner Gimcrack.

Kinds of sailboats
Early sailing yachts took the design of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century until the second half of the 19th century. The design of sizeable yachts was first heavily affected by the success of America, which was drawn by George Steers for a club led 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 manufactured in the modern sense, with merely a model used. Not until the latter half of the 19th century did what was labeled naval architecture come into being. Not until the 1920s did the use of the study of aerodynamics do for the craft of sails and rigging what such study had already done for hulls.

Because most of all sailboats were individually custom-built, there arose a desire for handicapping boats previous to the one-design class boats were designed. Thus, a rating rule came into being, which is found in the International Rule, taken on in 1906 and edited in 1919. In the present day, one of the fastest growing areas in the field of sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are built to standard requirements in length, beam, sail area, and other elements (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing between those boats can be held on an even basis with no handicapping at all. A perfect example is the uniform International America’s Cup Class taken on board for participants in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

So long as yachting was done largely for the royal and the affluent, cost was no problem, and the size of boats increased, in both length and weight. The rise and desire of smaller yachts came in the second 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 journey around the world (1895–98) captained single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray made plain the hardiness of smaller craft. Thereafter in the 20th century, notably after World War II, smaller racing and recreational yachts became more common, down to the dinghy, a favourite training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, boats of less than 3 m were setting sail single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.

Kinds of power yachts
Post the decade 1840–50, in which steam was set to take the place of sail power in public craft, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly employed in leisure vessels. Large power yachts were furthered to a high element, and long-distance cruising was a favourite occupation of the wealthy. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then gave way to those powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller sort of propulsion. As in the case of naval and merchant yachts, auxiliaries with both sail and power were the yacht archetype for a number of years. By the second half of the 20th century, many yachts were still auxiliaries, but the majority were only power yachts containing gasoline or diesel engines.

During the last decade of the 19th century there was a push 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 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 saw active service in World War II.

As more sizeable and more reliable internal-combustion engines were produced, many bigger boats began using them for power. The creation of the diesel engine, using heavy oil for fuel, progressed in World War I. From the decade following, large power-yacht creation flourished, climaxing in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. From that time the biggest auxiliary yacht manufactured was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The construction of big power yachts fell away in 1932, and the style after that was in preference of smaller, less pricey craft. Following World War II, lots of small naval craft were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting has become a globally popular competition enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen who are actually owning and upkeeping their own small pleasure boats. The popularity of craft and sailors is increasing steadily, not only in the traditional areas by the sea but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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