As the Dutch found preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the early yacht was a leisure craft used first by royalty and secondly by the burghers on the canals and then in the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Yacht racing was incidental, coming out of private matches. English yachting began with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his restoration to the English monarchy in 1660, the city of Amsterdam presented him with 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, reigned 1685–88), built additional yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and returning, on a £100 punt. Yachting became fashionable for the wealthy and royalty, but after that time the fashion did not last.

The first yacht club in the British Isles, the Water Club, was instigated around about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard group, with large naval panoply and formality. The closest thing to racing boats 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, after joining with other organisations, it became known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).

Yacht racing was first seen in some stipulated manner on the Thames around the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland instigated the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV ascended to monarchy in 1820, it was then 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 group 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 continuing location of British yacht racing. The association at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, again at the accession of George IV. Each member was required to possess boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing tests for great bids were held, and the social life was superlative. Ultimately Royal Yachting Club boats grew in size to over 350 tons.

In North America, yachting started with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and went on when the English took dominance. Sailing was mostly for leisure and found its apogee in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which sailed on the Mediterranean Sea and established a standard of luxury and sophistication for the later yachts in those waters from the late 19th century. The first enduring American yacht society, the Detroit Boat Club, was formed in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens instigated the New York Yacht Club aboard his schooner Gimcrack.

Kinds of sailboats
Early sailing yachts took the lines of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through the latter half of the 19th century. The craft of sizeable yachts was originally largely affected by the success of America, which was designed by George Steers for a group led 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. Early yachts were not designed and manufactured in today’s sense, with merely a model being used. Not until the latter half of the 19th century did what was called naval architecture come about. Not until the 1920s did the use of the study of aerodynamics do for the craft of sails and rigging what it had done earlier for hulls.

Because most of all sailboats had to be individually built, there was a need for handicapping boats previous to the one-design class boats were made. Thus, a rating rule was decreed, which is found in the International Rule, accepted in 1906 and revised in 1919. Today, one of the fastest blossoming areas in the sailing industry is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are built to the same dimensions in length, beam, sail area, and other aspects (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing such boats can be done on an even par with no handicapping necessary. A prime example is the uniform International America’s Cup Class taken on board for yachts in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

As long as yachting belonged largely for the royal and the rich, expense was no problem, and the size of boats developed, in both length and weight. The rise and desire of smaller craft came in the second half of the 19th century from 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 demonstrated the seaworthiness of smaller craft. Following this in the 20th century, notably after World War II, smaller racing and leisure craft became more common, 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
Post the decade 1840–50, when steam began to replace sail power in commercial boats, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly favoured in personal yachts. Sizeable power yachts were developed to a high standard, and long-distance sailing turned into a favoured activity of the well off. The earliest power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; these then made way to yachts powered by the fully submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. Like naval and merchant boats, auxiliaries with both sail and power were the yacht fashion for a number of years. By the later half of the 20th century, a lot of yachts were still auxiliaries, but the majority were exclusively power yachts with gasoline or diesel engines.

In the last decade of the 19th century there was a rise in the construction of bigger steam yachts. Conspicuous within these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, containing 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 for World War II.

As bigger and more reliable internal-combustion engines were produced, many big yachts were using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, using heavy oil for fuel, was furthered for World War I. From the decade after, large power-yacht building grew, hitting a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. From that point the largest auxiliary yacht built was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The construction of large power boats fell away from 1932, and the trend thereafter was in preference of smaller, less pricey craft. After World War II, lots of small naval boats were bought by private owners for conversion to yachts. In the late 20th century, yachting had become a widespread popular activity enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen individually sailing and upkeeping their own small recreational yachts. The number of craft and owners increased steadily, not only in the traditional areas along the seacoasts but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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