Yacht is a word derived from the Dutch language, which has given to the English so many of its sea-terms, meaning, originally, a fast boat, such as was built for chasing pirates and smugglers, and, later, a pleasure-boat. The latter meaning alone is now kept in view by the word, which is properly applied to anything designed and used for pleasure-sailing, whether moved by sails, steam, or electricity.

In Great Britain, where yachting, as we now understand it, arose, it was not until about 1650 that races between pleasure craft began to be sailed on the Thames and in the quiet waters about the Isle of Wight, while the first yacht-club was not formed until 1720 (at Cork, in Ireland). Even then, a century elapsed before yachting as a sport attracted much attention even among the British, famous for their love of the sea. In 1812 a “yacht-club” was founded at Cowes, in the Isle of Wight. It received a new impetus and became the “Royal Yacht-Club” in 1817, the Prince Regent having joined it, and in 1833 was again reorganized by King William III as the “Royal Yacht Squadron,” the designation it bears to-day. It carried on races, or regattas, as they soon came to be called (borrowing from the Italians a term descriptive of the old Venetian gondola races), but all sorts of cruising-boats were matched against one another, classified by a tonnage rule with no allowances for size or any of the systems by which contestants are now classified and equalized.

By this time, however, there was peace on the North Atlantic, and many a good seaman was free to turn his attention to enjoying and improving the tools of his profession. By this time, also, the Americans had made great headway as ship-builders and seamen, and by rivalry with the Old World for trade, and by experience in the Newfoundland fisheries and the West Indies fruit-trade, had acquired a skill in building and rigging ships that astonished the world by their speed and weatherly qualities. It was natural that these ideas should influence pleasure craft on this side of the water, as Great Britain’s long sea-struggles had influenced its sailors; and when, in 1844, the New York Yacht-Club was founded, the conditions were favorable for beginning that home development of yachting as a sport which was soon to place the Americans and Canadians among the leading yachting peoples of the world, and to lead to those international tests of speed that nowadays excite so wide-spread and intense an interest.

The great preponderance in numbers and value of pleasure-vessels in the United States, and in the number of clubs and club-members, is due not only to our large population and long coast-line, but to the great extent of inland waters furnished by our rivers and interior lakes, and to the prevalence of bays or protected lagoons, such as Narragansett Bay, the Great South Bay of Long Island, New York harbor, Delaware and Chesapeake bays, and the long series of “sounds” that border the southern Atlantic coast from Barnegat to Biscayne. The Great Lakes are bordered by yacht-clubs on both sides, and furnish space and weather for quite as serious work as tries the skill of ocean navigators, while a hundred smaller lakes make fine pleasure-waters and excellent training-grounds for fresh-water sailors.

Though the first regatta in America was sailed in 1845, little over half a century ago, the evolution of American yachts began with the building of the sloop Maria by Robert L. Stevens, one of that family of remarkable inventors, who had already devised the first practical screw-steamer, and afterward created the Monitor. Her model, as we learn from an excellent article in “The Century” for July, 1882, by S. G. W. Benjamin, was suggested by the low, broad, almost flat-bottomed sloops employed to steal over the shallows of the Hudson and the Sound—vessels depending upon beam rather than on ballast for stability, and imitated by many of our coasters, which are so stiff that they sometimes make outside voyages without either cargo or ballast; but the Maria had a long, sharp, hollowed bow, whence she expanded aft, with little taper at the stern, so that her deck-plan was that of an elongated flat-iron. The principal novelty about her, however, was the use of two “center-boards.”

A center-board is a plate of wood or metal, suspended, usually by a corner pivot, within a sheath or box in the waist, which can be let down through the keel into the water, so as to form an adjustable keel. It is the most convenient form of a very old device for preventing a boat’s drift to leeward, or tendency to capsize under the pressure of the wind. In earliest times, a mat was hung over the side. Later this was replaced by the leeboard, apparently a Dutch invention, which may still be seen on the canal barges in Holland, and which was a feature of the pirogues or periaugers (shallow double-ended sailing-canoes) that in early times formed almost the only type of small sail-boat in New York waters. Two other novel, foreshadowing features possessed by Mr. Stevens’ boat, were the use of rubber compressors on the traveler of the main boom to ease the strain of the sheet (rubber is applied in many places about modern rigging), and the bolting of lead to the keel as outside ballast.

The Maria justified the expectations aroused by these and other novelties in hull and rig by beating everything in existence, until a Swedish gentleman in New York constructed a much smaller boat, the Coquette, on very different lines, for although only sixty-six feet long she drew ten feet of water; and in a match on the open sea she beat the Maria easily, showing the superiority of the deep-keeled model for windy weather.

Profiting by these experiences and widely gathered information, a new designer essayed the task of making a still better yacht. This was George Steers, the son of a British naval captain and ship-modeler, who had become an American naval officer and was the first man to take charge of the Washington navy yard. He built several graceful and fleet-winged sloops, famous in their day, such as the Julia, David Carl’s Gracie, and many pilot-boats and ships. His most celebrated production, however, and the one which gave our yachtsmen an international reputation and established their method of pursuing recreation as the foremost American sport, was the America, from which the “America Cup” races take origin and name.

The origin was really accidental. When the first World’s Fair was to be held at the Crystal Palace in London, one of the attendant festivities was a great national gathering of British yachts in their favorite harbor, Cowes, at which, it was announced, foreign yachtsmen were to be welcome, especially Americans. In preparation for it, John C. Stevens, of Hoboken, then Commodore of the New York Yacht-Club, and some of his friends, ordered a new yacht from George Steers with which to cross the Atlantic and meet the English racers. This new boat, completed in the spring of 1851, and named America, was schooner-rigged, but had raking masts, no topsails except a small main gaff, and only one jib, whose foot was laced to a boom. Such was the style of the day; but later she was changed in rig so as to carry far more and bigger sails, more like those of a modern schooner-yacht.

The moment she arrived in Cowes, in the early summer of 1851, her superiority in speed was conceded, and no British captain would consent to meet her; but finally a match was extemporized, open to all nations, for which a prize was offered in the form of a cup presented by the Royal Yacht Squadron—not by the Queen, as usually said. Fifteen yachts responded, but none showed what it could do, for there was little wind, and the cup was awarded to the America more in general acknowledgment of its excellence than because of any great performance there. Not much importance was attached to the incident, but the silver tankard was brought home and left to ornament Commodore Stevens’ drawing-room until 1857, when its owners dedicated it to the purpose of a perpetual challenge cup, in charge of the New York Yacht-Club, for international races under specified conditions. Fifteen years elapsed, however, before the first contestant appeared.

The America had differed prominently in shape from all her opponents at Cowes, by having fine hollowed bows and a wide stern, instead of the bluff bows and narrowing after part—the “cod’s head and mackerel’s tail” pattern—of English craft; she also had sails that hung very flat instead of bellying out under the wind as was the foreign style. In these directions British yachtsmen saw good, and tried to improve; but they would have nothing to do with center-boards, and clung to their cutter-rig. We, on the other hand, had gained ideas as to improving rig, especially in the schooners, and in the bestowal of ballast, outside and in.

At length, in 1870, an English schooner, the Cambria, came over to compete for the cup, and was pitted against a fleet of crack yachts off Sandy Hook; but again the wind was so light that the boats did little more than drift. The Englishman, nevertheless, was outdrifted by nine others, and the leader was the little sloop Magic, which became the custodian of the cup. The next year, however, another challenge was received, and the British keel-yacht Livonia appeared and was defeated by the American keel-schooner Sappho, which, under a new rule, had won her right to defend the cup by first beating in preparatory ocean races all other rivals for the honor. As this contest was between single representative yachts, tried in five races, and in all sorts of weather, it was a fair and conclusive measure of comparative qualities. The next yacht to come after the international cup was the Canadian Countess of Dufferin, which was promptly defeated by the Magic in 1876. Five years later another Canadian appeared, the Atalanta, differing from previous contestants in being a single-masted center-board yacht; but her rigging and finish were so bad that her excellent model could not save her from defeat (1881) at the hands of the elegant iron sloop Mischief which had been built especially for the race, and had won her foremost place through severe trial races, as before.

Up to this time, as Mr. W. P. Stephens tells us in “The Century” for August, 1893, whence many of the portraits of these racers have been taken, no pleasure-boats had been built except after the rule of thumb—some practical sailor whittled out a model according to his ideas, and the builder followed it.

One of the results of this controversy was the sending to this country, from Scotland, of a little ten-ton racing cutter, the Madge, purely to show what capabilities lay in “a deep, narrow, lead-keeled craft with the typical cutter rig.” The only American able to beat her was the Shadow, a famous Herreshoff sloop of unusual depth, and she did it but once. Nevertheless, the controversy was not decided in the United States, and the Britishers thought it worth while to try to give us another lesson. In 1884 they launched two big cutters, Irex and Genesta, and in 1885 a third, Galatea; and Sir Richard Sutton, owner of Genesta, and Lieutenant William Henn, R. N., owner of Galatea, challenged for the America Cup.

Then the question arose: What should be done to meet them? The British cutters differed from those previously met, in that they were built for racing, not for general use—were “racing machines” instead of cruising-yachts. To meet this, a scientific designer of marine vessels, Mr. A. Cary Smith of New York, was called upon to produce a moderately deep, center-board, iron sloop-yacht on the lines of the Mischief, but much larger, and he produced the Priscilla. But while she was building there was quietly begun another yacht, the Puritan, owned and built in Boston from designs by an almost unheard-of architect, Mr. Edward Burgess, who previously to this performance had been renowned only as a student of insects!

“The stout oak keel of the new Puritan was laid upon a lead keel of twenty-seven tons, carried down into a deep projecting keel; the plumb stem, the sheer, and the long counter suggested the British cutter rather than the American sloop; the draft of eight feet six inches was greatly in excess of all of the old center-board boats, and the rig was essentially that of the cutter rather than of the sloop.”

A struggle decided that she was better than the Priscilla, and in the cup races in September she proved herself better than the famous English cutter Genesta.

Nevertheless, when the Galatea, whose challenge had been postponed until 1886, came out, the Puritan had already been distanced by an American rival, the Mayflower, practically a larger copy of herself, as Galatea was of Genesta, and, therefore, a lead-keeled center-board boat, having a cutter-like rig. Trial races showed that the Mayflower was able to beat all her beautiful predecessors, and again the British contestant was obliged to take a defeat and leave the prize in New York.

The result of this last contest (1886) was to cause British yachtsmen to abandon their old tonnage rule of measurement and adopt the far better modern one of load-line and sail-area measurement. Another challenge immediately came from Glasgow, supported by a boat named Thistle, built under the new rule; and to oppose it Mr. Burgess built the Volunteer, which differed from its predecessors mainly in increased draft and tendency toward the cutter model. She easily beat the Thistle, and the discouraged foreigners rested for some years before trying again to wrest from us the coveted trophy.

In 1891, however, there came to New York, from the yards of the Herreshoff Brothers, in Rhode Island, a new forty-six-foot yacht, which soon put the fame of the Volunteer and all her glorious rivals into the background. This was the Gloriana, “remarkable as a daring and original departure from the accepted theories.” The radical novelty in her form consisted in the great cutting away of her bulk under water while preserving the full extent of the water-line, and the making of a very deep, heavily loaded keel, trusted for stability. Her hull was also novel, consisting of a double skin of thin wood on steel frames, while the upper part of the hull projected excessively at both ends. She was everywhere a winner, and was immediately followed by a smaller boat, the Dilemma, whose keel was an almost rectangular plate of steel, the ballast, which alone was trusted for stability, being in the form of a cigar-shaped cylinder of lead bolted to the lower edge of the “fin,” as this kind of keel was appropriately styled. Many boats of this pattern were soon afloat, most of them highly successful at home and abroad, and carrying a surprising spread of canvas.

The year 1893 brought another challenge for the cup in the person of Lord Dunraven, sailing the yacht Valkyrie, but he was met by a new, well-proved Herreshoff fin-keel, the Vigilant (built of a new alloy—Tobin bronze), and handsomely defeated. The following season the Vigilant went to England, and found herself equally overmatched by the Britannia, owned by the Prince of Wales, while Valkyrie II was wrecked. In 1895 Lord Dunraven sent a second challenge, backed by a new Valkyrie (III); and this produced a fresh American contestant, again designed and built by the Herreshoffs, named Defender. The races came off amid intense public excitement, outside of Sandy Hook, but were most unsatisfactory; “in the first, Defender won; in the second, Valkyrie was disqualified as the result of a foul, and Lord Dunraven declined to sail a third.”

Such has been the history of this long series of races for the America Cup, and such the development of its defenders; but while they and their work have stimulated interest in yachting all over the world, they have really not influenced it greatly, because all of the later boats competing were not practical yachts, in which one might cruise and live afloat, and enjoy life with his friends, but “machines” in which every quality tending to comfort and safety was sacrificed to the requirements of speed. In fact, the owners of these “big boats” kept small, handy, comfortable yachts for their own enjoyment, and the racers were as a rule sailed by a skipper and crew of professional racing sailors.

There are said to be over two hundred yacht-clubs in the United States, enrolling about four thousand yachts, an eighth of which are steam or electric boats, scattered wherever any water suitable for the sport exists. With the lakes and rivers we have nothing to do, except to say that the yachtsmen of Montreal and Quebec are really salt-water sailors, for they cruise in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and elsewhere at sea as well as their fellow-sportsmen of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. At the other extreme the Havana Yacht-Club has American members who take their boats to the West Indies every winter. Bermuda is another favorite resort, and the scene of lively races with a local, narrow sort of craft, called a “flyer,” which will beat almost anything if only it can be kept right side up.

The most important and numerous yachting interest of the country, however, as would be expected, is along the northeastern seaboard, where, measured by numbers and the investment in boats, wharves, club-houses, and equipments generally, it surpasses any other district in the world. More than one hundred clubs exist between Maine and Philadelphia.