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As the Dutch came to dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the early yacht became a leisure craft used mostly by royalty and later by the burghers for the canals and then in the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing yachts was incidental, arising as 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 gave him a 20-metre (66-foot) pleasure 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), built more yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and returning, on a £100 wager. Yachting rose as popular with 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 at about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard association, with great naval panoply and rigour. The closest thing to racing was the “chase,” for which the “fleet” pursued an imaginary enemy. The club endured, for the large part as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, by merging with other clubs, it became the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).

Yacht racing began in some organized manner on the Thames in the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland founded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV came to monarchy in 1820, it was known as the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded following a racing argument, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht association 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 continued location of British racing. The club at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, again at the ascension of George IV. Every member was required to have boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing matches for high bids were held, and the social life was lovely. Ultimately Royal Yachting Club boats were raised in size to more than 350 tons.

In North America, yachting was first accomplished with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and persisted when the English held power. Sailing was largely for pleasure and found its apogee 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 continuing American yacht group, the Detroit Boat Club, was started in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens instigated the New York Yacht Club while on board his schooner Gimcrack.

Kinds of sailboats
The first sailing yachts were within the style of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through the second half of the 19th century. The craft of bigger yachts was initially largely impacted by the success of America, which was designed by George Steers for a association 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 built in today’s sense, with just a model being used. Not until the latter half of the 19th century did what was known as naval architecture come into action. Not until the 1920s did the use of the science of aerodynamics do for the craft of sails and rigging what it had earlier done for hulls.

Because almost all sailboats were individually custom-built, there arose a need for handicapping boats as this was previous to the one-design class boats were designed. Thus, a rating rule was decreed, which resulted in the International Rule, accepted in 1906 and edited in 1919. In modern times, one of the fastest growing areas in the field of sailing 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 elements (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing these boats can be done on an even basis with no handicapping at all. A prime example is the standard International America’s Cup Class taken on for participants in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

As long as yachting was done mostly for the nobility and the wealthy, cost was no issue, and the size of boats increased, in both length and weight. The rise and desire of smaller craft 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) led single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray demonstrated the value of smaller yachts. Later in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and leisure boats became more common, down to the dinghy, a favoured training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, craft of less than 3 m were traveled in single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.

Kinds of power yachts
Post the decade 1840–50, in which steam began to emulate sail power in commercial vessels, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly favoured in pleasure boats. Large power yachts were furthered to a high degree, and long-distance cruising was a favourite occupation of the wealthy. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then made way to yachts powered by the wholly submerged screw or propeller type of propulsion. As well as naval and merchant yachts, auxiliaries carrying both sail and power were the yacht fashion for a number of years. By the second half of the 20th century, many yachts were still auxiliaries, but the large part were only power yachts containing gasoline or diesel engines.

From the last decade of the 19th century there was a boom in the construction of large steam yachts. Notably within these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, containing 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 during World War II.

As larger and better quality internal-combustion engines were produced, many bigger boats were using them for power. The establishment of the diesel engine, employing heavy oil for fuel, advanced in World War I. From the decade after that, bigger power-yacht manufacture flourished, hitting a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. From that point the best auxiliary yacht manufactured was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The building of bigger power craft fell away after 1932, and the style after that was toward smaller, less costly yachts. Following World War II, a lot of small naval boats were sold to private owners for conversion to yachts. In the late 20th century, yachting had become a widespread popular competition enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen who are actually manning and upkeeping their own small pleasure boats. The amount of craft and yachtsmen increased steadily, not only in the traditional areas by the seacoasts but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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