The Dutch background
The yacht was a Dutch invention in name and, to a large extent, in practice. In the Netherlands of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, dense waterways, busy ports and a rich merchant class created a market for fast, handy boats. The Dutch jacht, from a word meaning to hunt or chase, was a light and manoeuvrable vessel. Governments and navies used such ships to carry officials and chase smugglers, and the same type of hull was soon adapted for private owners.
The Dutch jacht had a fore-and-aft rig, usually a spritsail or gaff sail with headsails, rather than the square sails of large merchant ships. A fore-and-aft rig lets a boat sail closer to the wind and handle with a small crew, which matters in narrow channels and tidal estuaries. Many Dutch vessels also had leeboards, which are pivoting boards hung on the sides to reduce leeway in the shallow waters of the coast. Dutch painters of the seventeenth century recorded these boats in great numbers, in calm and rough water, and their pictures are among the best evidence of how they looked.
A related category, the pleasure yacht, grew out of this working type. Wealthy burghers and city authorities used decorated vessels for outings and ceremonial occasions, and the fashion was noted by visitors from abroad.
Charles II and the English yacht
The English experience of Dutch yachts came through exile. Charles II spent much of the 1650s on the Continent, including time in the Netherlands, and saw the pleasure yacht at first hand. When he returned to England in 1660 the Dutch gave him a yacht named Mary. She was quickly followed by English-built yachts, among them the Katherine, built by Peter Pett, and the king and his brother James, Duke of York, were reported to have raced.
Charles seems to have enjoyed sailing himself, not merely being carried on board. Courtiers and naval officers copied him, and the building of yachts for the crown became a minor industry at the royal dockyards on the Thames. The yachts also served practical roles, ferrying the king and officials and acting as dispatch vessels. The Mary was wrecked in 1675 off Anglesey, though the crew is reported to have survived.
The result was an English fashion for sailing for its own sake. At first this was limited to the court and a small circle of wealthy men, but the idea took root.
English adaptations
English designers adapted the Dutch type in several ways. Many early English yachts were larger and more heavily decorated than the Dutch originals, partly because they had a ceremonial function. Over the following century the form drifted toward cutter and sloop rigs, which became standard for coastal sailing. The single-masted sloop suited yacht use because it needed few crew and was inexpensive to run. In time, yachts became more specialised, shedding the formal decoration that marked early examples.
By the eighteenth century the naval establishment still built yachts for royalty, but private ownership was increasing, particularly in Ireland and the south of England, where there were many sheltered harbours.
The first yacht clubs
Clubs were the means by which pleasure sailing became organised. The Water Club of Cork, in Ireland, is traditionally dated to about 1720 and is regarded as the first yacht club. Its members, men of the local gentry and merchants, are known to have followed rules for signals and manoeuvres in a kind of formal parade of sail. The club survives as the Royal Cork Yacht Club.
In England the Yacht Club of 1815, founded at Cowes on the Isle of Wight, grew into the Royal Yacht Squadron. Its early membership was aristocratic, and it received royal patronage within a few years. It acted as an informal authority for rules and etiquette. Other clubs followed along the English coast, and in the United States the New York Yacht Club was founded in 1844 by a group of owners.
These institutions did more than organise a social life. They offered a place to regulate races, settle disputes and pass on practices, all of which helped to turn yachting from a private amusement into a sport with recognised customs.
A pattern for later development
The seventeenth-century yacht was not what would now be called a racing machine, and the transition from courtly craft to competitive one took more than a century. Even so, the basic elements were in place early: a fast and handy hull, a rig that could be managed by a few people, and an owner who valued sailing for its own sake. Racing was a natural extension, and in the nineteenth century the victory of the schooner America at Cowes in 1851 began a new competitive era. That later story, with its rules and technology, comes after the groundwork described here.