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As the Dutch rose to preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the initial yacht became a leisure craft used initially by royalty and then by the burghers on the canals and the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing was incidental, coming out of private matches. English yachting started with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his return to the English throne in 1660, the city of Amsterdam sent him a 20-metre (66-foot) pleasure boat with a beam (maximum width) of 5.6 m (18 feet), which he then named Mary. Charles and his brother James, the duke of York (James II, reigned 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 with 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 started 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 a fictional enemy. The club went on, largely as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, when joining with other clubs, it became the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).

Yacht racing was first seen in some organized 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 monarchy in 1820, it came to be named 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 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 perpetual location of British yachting. The organisation at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, again at the ascension of George IV. All members were required to own boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing tests for great bets were held, and the club life was wonderful. Eventually Royal Yachting Club boats increased in size to bigger than 350 tons.

In North America, yachting began 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 pleasure and reached its epitome in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which traveled on the Mediterranean Sea and established a standard of luxury and sophistication for the later yachts in that area from the late 19th century. The first persisting American yacht club, the Detroit Boat Club, was instigated in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens founded the New York Yacht Club while on board his schooner Gimcrack.

Kinds of sailboats
Early sailing yachts were within the style of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century until the later half of the 19th century. The style of sizeable yachts was originally largely affected by the success of America, which was created by George Steers for a club headed by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) had its namesake after its success 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 later half of the 19th century did what was known as naval architecture come about. Not until the 1920s did the application of the research of aerodynamics do for the design of sails and rigging what it had earlier done for hulls.

Because most of all sailboats had to be individually custom-built, there was a desire for handicapping boats as this was before the one-design class boats were made. Hence, a rating rule came into being, which resulted in the International Rule, accepted in 1906 and amended in 1919. In the present day, one of the rapidly blossoming areas in the sailing industry is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are manufactured to standard dimensions in length, beam, sail area, and other areas (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing such boats can be held on an even basis with no handicapping required. A prime example is the uniform International America’s Cup Class adopted for racers in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

So long as yachting was done primarily for the royal and the affluent, cost was no object, and the size of boats developed, in both length and weight. The ascendancy and preference of smaller yachts happened in the latter 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 demonstrated the value of small yachts. Thereafter in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and recreational boats became more common, down to the dinghy, a preferred training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, boats of less than 3 m were traveled in single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.

Kinds of power yachts
Following the decade 1840–50, in which steam began to take the place of sail power in market boats, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly favoured in pleasure yachts. Sizeable power yachts were furthered to a high element, and long-distance cruising was a fond occupation of the rich. The earliest power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; they then made way to yachts powered by the completely submerged screw or propeller sort of propulsion. As well as naval and merchant vessels, auxiliaries possessing both sail and power were the yacht archetype for a number of years. By the later half of the 20th century, many yachts were still auxiliaries, but the large part were exclusively power yachts that had gasoline or diesel engines.

From the last decade of the 19th century there was a push in the design of bigger steam yachts. In particular among these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, with triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was sailed by a crew of over 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 was used in active service for World War II.

As larger and more reliable internal-combustion engines were produced, many bigger yachts were using them for power. The creation of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, progressed from World War I. In the decade after, bigger power-yacht building grew, reaching a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. From that point the biggest auxiliary yacht manufactured was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The building of larger power craft fell away from 1932, and the fashion after that was toward smaller, less pricey yachts. After World War II, many small naval craft were sold to private owners for conversion to yachts. By the late 20th century, yachting had become a globally popular competition enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen who are actually manning and maintaining their own small leisure boats. The popularity of yachts and yachtsmen has increased steadily, not only in the traditional areas on the sea but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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