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As the Dutch found preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht had been a leisure craft used mostly by royalty and secondly by the burghers on 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 began with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his return 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, ruled 1685–88), built additional yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and returning, on a £100 bet. Yachting became classy among the rich and royalty, 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 association, and held large naval panoply and rigour. The closest thing to racing boats was the “chase,” for which the “fleet” pursued an imagined enemy. The club endured, largely as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, by merging with other groups, it became known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).

Yacht racing was seen in some organized fashion on the Thames about the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland founded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV rose to the throne in 1820, it came to be named the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded with a racing fight, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht association had been initiated 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, likewise at the accession of George IV. Every member was required to possess boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing matches for large bids were held, and the society life was splendid. Eventually Royal Yachting Club boats grew 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 had control. Sailing was mostly for pleasure and reached its epitome in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which cruised on the Mediterranean Sea and created a minimum of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in the area from the late 19th century. The first persisting American yacht club, the Detroit Boat Club, was started in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens founded the New York Yacht Club while on board 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 latter half of the 19th century. The design of bigger yachts was first greatly impacted by the success of America, which was drawn by George Steers for a syndicate started 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. The first yachts were not designed and built in a contemporary sense, with just a model for an outline. Not until the second half of the 19th century did what was called naval architecture come into being. Not until the 1920s did the application of the study of aerodynamics do for the design of sails and rigging what such science had earlier done for hulls.

Because almost all sailboats had been individually manufactured, there was a desire for handicapping boats previous to the one-design class boats were made. Hence, a rating rule was written, which resulted in the International Rule, adopted in 1906 and amended in 1919. In modern times, one of the fastest blossoming areas in sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are built to standard specifications in length, beam, sail area, and other areas (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing such boats can be had on an even par with no handicapping necessary. A great example is the generic International America’s Cup Class taken on board for racers in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

So long as yachting belonged mostly for the nobility and the rich, cost was no problem, and the size of boats grew, in both length and weight. The promotion and preference of smaller craft occurred in the second 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 journey around the world (1895–98) captained single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray demonstrated the hardiness of smaller yachts. Following this in the 20th century, particularly after World War II, smaller racing and recreational boats became more common, down to the dinghy, a favourite training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, craft of less than 3 m were setting sail single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.

Kinds of power yachts
After the decade 1840–50, at which point steam started to emulate sail power in public boats, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly favoured in personal vessels. Large power yachts were progressed to a high degree, and long-distance sailing was a favourite pastime of the well off. The first power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then gave rise to yachts powered by the completely submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. As in the case of naval and merchant boats, auxiliaries with both sail and power were the yacht fashion for a number of years. By the second half of the 20th century, a lot of yachts were still auxiliaries, but the larger part were exclusively power yachts that had gasoline or diesel engines.

From the last decade of the 19th century there was a rise in the construction of more sizeable steam yachts. Notably of 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, 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 in World War II.

As larger and more reliable internal-combustion engines were produced, many bigger yachts were using them for power. The development of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, progressed from World War I. During the decade following that, large power-yacht building flourished, climaxing in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. During that point the largest auxiliary yacht constructed was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The manufacture of large power yachts fell away in 1932, and the style thereafter was for smaller, less expensive boats. After World War II, a lot of small naval boats were sold to private owners for conversion to yachts. By the late 20th century, yachting has become a internationally popular activity enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen who are actually sailing and keeping their own small recreational yachts. The number of yachts and owners increased steadily, not only in the traditional locations along the sea but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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