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As the Dutch rose to preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht was a pleasure craft used mostly by royalty and later by the burghers for the canals as well as the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Yacht racing 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 reaffirmation to the English royalty 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, sovereign 1685–88), ordered for more yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and back, on a £100 bet. Yachting became popular with the affluent and royalty, but after that period the trend did not last.

The first yacht association in the British Isles, the Water Club, was instigated around about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard organization, and held much naval panoply and formality. The closest thing to racing was the “chase,” for which the “fleet” pursued an imagined enemy. The club persisted, mostly 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 was seen in some stipulated manner on the Thames about the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland founded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV ascended to monarchy in 1820, it came to be named the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded with a racing dispute, 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 setting of British racing. The club at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, also at the ascension of George IV. Each member was required to have boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing races for great stakes were held, and the social life was lovely. It came to be that the Royal Yachting Club boats increased in size to bigger 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 leisure and reached its epitome in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which traveled on the Mediterranean Sea and set a minimum of luxury and sophistication for the later yachts in that area from the late 19th century. The first persisting American yacht group, the Detroit Boat Club, was started in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens began the New York Yacht Club while aboard 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 to the second half of the 19th century. The craft of large yachts was first greatly impacted by the success of America, which was designed by George Steers for a syndicate started by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) found its namesake after its victory at Cowes in 1851. Early yachts were not designed and built in today’s sense, with just 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 research of aerodynamics do for the structure of sails and rigging what science had previously done for hulls.

Because nearly all sailboats had to be individually custom-built, there came a desire for handicapping boats before the one-design class boats were built. Therefore, a rating rule was created, which resulted in the International Rule, taken on in 1906 and amended in 1919. In modern times, one of the rapidly flourishing areas in sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are created to standard dimensions in length, beam, sail area, and other elements (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing those boats can be done on an even basis with no handicapping at all. A great example is the standard International America’s Cup Class taken on for racers in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

As long as yachting was done mostly for the aristocracy and the rich, expense was no problem, and the size of boats developed, in both length and weight. The promotion and popularity of smaller craft came 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 voyage around the world (1895–98) led single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray demonstrated the hardiness of less sizeable yachts. Later in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and recreational craft became more popular, down to the dinghy, a favoured training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, craft of less than 3 m were sailed single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.

Kinds of power yachts
Following the decade 1840–50, in which steam was set to replace sail power in public boats, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly employed in personal yachts. Sizeable power yachts were furthered to a high degree, and long-distance travel was a favourite pastime of the well off. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; they then gave way to boats powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller sort of propulsion. As well as naval and merchant vessels, auxiliaries possessing both sail and power were the yacht standard for a number of years. By the latter half of the 20th century, many yachts were still auxiliaries, but the majority were only power yachts with gasoline or diesel engines.

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

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

The manufacture of big power yachts fell away in 1932, and the fashion thereafter was in preference of smaller, less costly boats. From World War II, lots of small naval boats were sold to private owners for conversion to yachts. In the late 20th century, yachting is a internationally beloved competition enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen individually manning and maintaining their own small recreational boats. The amount of boats and yachtsmen is increasing steadily, not only in the traditional locations by the sea but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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