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As the Dutch found preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht became a pleasure craft used mostly by royalty and later by the burghers in the canals and then in the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing 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 throne in 1660, the city of Amsterdam sent him a 20-metre (66-foot) leisure boat with a beam (maximum width) of 5.6 m (18 feet), which he called Mary. Charles and his brother James, the duke of York (James II, sovereign 1685–88), made other yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and the same way back, on a £100 punt. Yachting rose as popular among the affluent and nobility, but after that period the habit 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 organization, and had large naval panoply and formality. The closest thing to a race was the “chase,” when the “fleet” pursued an imagined enemy. The club endured, for the large part as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, when merging with other clubs, it became the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).

Yacht racing was seen in some stipulated fashion on the Thames in the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland funded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV came to sovereignty in 1820, it was then called the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded after a racing fight, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht group had been formed 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 organisation at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, also at the accession of George IV. All members were required to have boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing matches for high bets were held, and the society life was splendid. It came to be that the Royal Yachting Club boats were raised in size to bigger than 350 tons.

In North America, yachting began with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and persisted when the English held power. Sailing was for the most part for leisure and reached its high point in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which sailed on the Mediterranean Sea and created a benchmark of luxury and sophistication for the later yachts in those waters from the late 19th century. The first persisting American yacht society, the Detroit Boat Club, was instigated 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 followed the style of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century until the second half of the 19th century. The craft of bigger yachts was initially heavily affected by the victory of America, which was created by George Steers for a syndicate 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. Earlier yachts were not designed and built in a contemporary sense, with only a model being used. 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 study of aerodynamics do for the craft of sails and rigging what it had earlier done for hulls.

Because most of all sailboats were individually custom-built, there was a need for handicapping boats previous to the one-design class boats were made. Hence, a rating rule was decreed, which is found in the International Rule, accepted in 1906 and revised in 1919. In modern times, one of the most rapidly growing areas in the sailing industry is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are created to the same specifications in length, beam, sail area, and other aspects (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing those boats can be had on an even keel with no handicapping required. A perfect example is the generic International America’s Cup Class adopted for racers in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

So long as yachting was done primarily for the aristocracy and the affluent, money was no problem, and the size of boats grew, in both length and weight. The ascendancy and desire of smaller boats occurred 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) led single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray made plain the value of small yachts. Thereafter in the 20th century, particularly after World War II, smaller racing and pleasure craft became commonplace, down to the dinghy, a popular 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
After the decade 1840–50, when steam was set to emulate sail power in public boats, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were favoured increasingly in pleasure yachts. Large power yachts were progressed to a high element, and long-distance cruising was a favoured pastime of the affluent. The earliest power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; these then gave rise to boats powered by the fully submerged screw or propeller type of propulsion. As well as naval and merchant boats, auxiliaries possessing both sail and power were the yacht standard for a number of years. By the later half of the 20th century, many yachts were still auxiliaries, but the larger part were exclusively power yachts with gasoline or diesel engines.

In the last decade of the 19th century there was a boom in the construction of large steam yachts. Conspicuous within 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, commissioned by the United States Navy in 1898, was the official yacht of the president of the United States until 1929 and gave active service in World War II.

As bigger and better quality internal-combustion engines were produced, many large boats were using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, using heavy oil for fuel, progressed in World War I. From the decade after, large power-yacht creation blossomed, reaching a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. In that period the biggest auxiliary yacht constructed was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The construction of bigger power yachts fell away in 1932, and the trend thereafter was toward smaller, less pricey boats. Following World War II, lots of small naval vessels were sold to private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting has become a widespread beloved sport enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen personally manning and keeping their own small recreational craft. The amount of boats and sailors has increased steadily, not only in the traditional areas along the sea but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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