Many readers of the Kydd series also enjoy yacht sailing, and they range over the whole spectrum of the sport – from being part of teams like UK Admiral’s Cup participant Colin Garnham‑Edge to solo racers like Singlehanded  Transpac sailor Eric Jungemann. If you have any suggestions for material for this page we’d love to hear from you, perhaps additional links or memories of your own first boat.

By James Taylor FRSA

Mr Taylor is a leading authority on yachting art, and a consultant to private collectors, museums and auction houses. This excerpt from “Yachts on Canvas” published by Conway Maritime Press  is  reproduced with their kind permission

ention the word ‘yacht’ and most people conjure up images of sleek ocean racers battling against the elements on the high seas. In fact, the term covers a surprisingly wide range of vessels of varying sizes, rigs and means of propulsion.

In 1925, B Heckstall‑Smith, a leading authority on yachting, defined the yacht as a ‘craft of considerable dimensions, not plying for hire, and devoted to pleasure’. He believed that the earliest literary reference to such a craft was Plutarch’s account of the journey Cleopatra made across the Mediterranean to visit Anthony noting the queen had sailed ‘in a vessel, the stern whereof was gold, the sails of purple silk, and the oars of silver, which gently kept time to the sound of music’.

However, even in his own day, Heckstall‑Smith’s definition of the vessel was too restrictive. The distinction between business and pleasure in relation to yachts has always been a difficult one to make, and yachting as long been associated with the promotion of companies and products.

Yachting as we know it today originated in the seventeenth century in the Netherlands. The word ‘yacht’is derived from the Dutch jacht, which itself comes from the verb ‘to hurry’ or ‘to hunt’. Originally the word described any fast sailing ship or boat. In the mid‑seventeenth century, such boats were mainly used for official business to transport dignitaries.

During the English Civil War, King Charles II lived in exile in the Dutch Republic. He was entranced by the many types of yachts sailing on the country’s inland waterways and round its coasts and soon became a yachting enthusiast. After his restoration to the English throne he introduced yacht racing to England. In 1661 he raced against his brother the Duke of York for a wager of £100. According to John Evelyn, who accompanied the king in the Katherine during the race, ‘The King lost in the going, the wind being contrary, but saved stakes in returning.’ From this account, it would appear that the first recorded race in England ended in a draw.

In the Restoration period yacht design moved away from the Dutch models to the beautiful English smack‑rigged yachts. Their main role was to carry dispatches and courtiers around the British coast and to and from the Continent. The king also used them for racing. In 1661, the king converted the Surprise, the coasting collier in which he had escaped from England ten years earlier, to a smack‑rigged yacht and renamed her Royal Escape. She was kept moored in the Thames opposite Whitehall Palace ‘as a reminder to himself and his subjects.’

Tsar Peter owned and sailed many yachts. In September 1697, a spectacular mock naval battle took place off Amsterdam in honour of his visit there. The ‘naval ships’ were in fact private yachts divided into two squadrons. The next year, King William III organised another mock battle using yachts in the Solent off the Isle of Wight to mark a visit by the tsar.

Yachts were used by the British Royal Family for state occasions, diplomatic missions and reviews of the fleet, as well as for cruising and racing. George IV was an enthusiastic yachtsman, and on his accession to the throne in 1820 he granted the Yacht Club in Cowes the prefix ‘Royal’. King William IV renamed it the Royal Yacht Squadron. William was popularly known as the ‘Sailor King’, and he often sailed on Virginia Water in Surrey.

The Royal Family's association with yachting helped promote the sport among the British upper classes and by the end of the eighteenth century it was enjoyed by large numbers of wealthy aristocrats and businessmen.

The British royal family were not alone in their love of yachts. Royal yachts were used in many European countries including Spain, Portugal, Italy, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Germany and in the Austro‑Hungarian empire. 

The award for the most bizarre royal yacht design belongs to Tsar Alexander II of Russia's triple‑screw steam yacht Livadia. Built by the Govan yard in Scotland in 1880, and sumptuously fitted out like a floating palace, she was almost circular. Although she was a very comfortable and successful yacht, she was hardly ever used and was broken up in 1926.

Two of the most famous yacht clubs were founded in the eighteenth century. The world’s oldest club is the Water Club of the Harbour of Cork in Ireland, established in 1720. The first yacht club in England, and the second oldest in the world, was the Cumberland Sailing Society founded in 1775. In 1830, some members broke away and formed the Thames Yacht Club, now the Royal Thames Yacht Club.

In the late eighteenth century yachting in Britain’s coastal waters was becoming increasingly hazardous as a consequence of the country’s war with France. It was not until 1815, when the defeat of Napoleon restored peace to Europe, that British yachtsmen could again enjoy safe and unrestricted sailing.

This was the beginning of the golden age of yachting. During the course of the nineteenth century, with the increasing prosperity of the middle classes, the sport reached unprecedented heights of popularity. Many new yacht clubs were formed and some of the world's most famous races were established. In particular it was the establishment of the Yacht Club at Cowes in 1815, later the Royal Yacht Squadron, that encouraged the growth of British yachting.  (Left: Geoff Hunt's “Juno, Christchurch Bay race, Admiral's Cup 1989”)

At the beginning of the twentieth century, small racing yachts in Britain began to use the Bermudan rig, rather than the gaff rig. The widespread adoption of this rig, a triangular sail set on a single mast, was a major development for yachting, leading to a greater sail area.

The origins of the Bermudan rig remain obscure. Having commonly been used by sailing craft in the West Indies from around 1800, it was introduced for small racing craft in Britain from about 1911, and later adopted by larger yachts between the two world wars.

Although interest in yachting was at first slower to grow in the United States than in Britain, by the third quarter of the nineteenth century the sport had expanded rapidly across the country. The Boston Boat Club was established in 1834 but the most famous American yachting society is the New York Yacht Club, founded in 1844. Clubs were soon established at Brooklyn, New Orleans, Long Island, Boston and San Francisco. The America’s Cup, now the most prestigious of all yacht races had its origins in the middle of the nineteenth century.

Around the turn of the twentieth century designers in both Britain and the United States were building larger and faster yachts than ever before. These big‑class racing vessels attracted huge public interest and the sport grew amazingly in popularity in the years leading up to the First World War.

Although the outbreak of fighting in 1914 brought all yachting in the belligerent countries to a standstill, immediately after the war there was an attempt to restart big‑class racing. In 1920 the America’s Cup race was contested; in 1923 the Bermuda races were resumed; and in 1925 the first Fastnet race from Cowes to Plymouth took place. 

In 1925 an international conference was held at which a new measurement rule was agreed that gave designers a certain degree of freedom in relation to the size and form of the yachts. It was under this rule that the big J‑class racing yachts were built, but they lasted less than 20 years, their building, maintaining and racing costs making them very expensive.

Since the end of the nineteenth century people have raced smaller boats required only a one‑man or limited crews, and in recent years windsurfing has become one of the most popular forms of yachting and one of the most accessible of all water sports. Although yachts still convey heads of state, officials and the well‑to‑do, as the celebrated yachtsman Robin Knox‑Johnston notes, ‘Huge yachts with their large paid crews are only the most glamorous part of the story.’ Today the range of yachting is enormous. It encompasses competitive day‑sailing in large and small boats, and long‑distance sailing in yachts managed single‑handedly or by crews of up to twenty or more – but  the vast majority of devotees of yachting just enjoy cruising with family and friends!

ulian has fond memories of his first boat, a Tamar Class Dinghy. “I named her Galah, which is a somewhat affectionate Australian slang term for a fool; when I joined the Australian Navy from the UK my messmates had a habit of calling any such transferees a ‘Pommie Galah’.

I acquired Galah in Hobart, Tasmania, shortly after I had just been rated to petty officer in the Royal Australian Navy, and, flush with money, had come home on leave determined to buy my first boat. I bought her in the Purdon and Featherstone slipyard (which sadly is no longer) and from Hobart I sailed her down channel to South Arm, where my parents lived.

She handled well with just me aboard, but I sometimes took one of my younger brothers out in her. Galah was sturdy and agreeable, comfortable and calm – and unlike many modern faster craft, very dry.

I regret I just don’t have the time to sail today – but there will always be a special spot in my heart for my first boat.”

Bill Peterson, from San Pedro in California, also recalls his first boat with affection. “I grew up at the Isthmus of Santa Catalina Island, off the coast of California in the 1960s – a very small community of less than 100 souls in those days. I had my first dinghy when I was five or six and my first sailboat at about ten, a small flat bottomed scow with a drop centreboard and a touchy weather helm that I named Valkyr. I remember this distinctly because ten minutes after I launched her for the first time I accidentally jibed while sailing through the moorings and capsized and sank her!

When I did manage to keep my scow afloat, every dinghy was a Spanish galleon and every moored yacht a French ship‑of‑the‑line. “Beat to quarters, run the guns out, and fire as you bear” was my motto.

Sadly, they never let me actually do that when I was an officer in the Coast Guard, nor later when I ran an Oceanographic Research Vessel. Nobody complained when I was a charter skipper in the USVI - they just wouldn’t let me have any powder or shot!”

We’d love to hear of your first boat experiences!   Julian@JulianStockwin.com

n Kydd's day, yachts were not only popular pleasure and sporting craft, they functioned as personal transport for notables such as Dockyard Commissioners and Lords of the Admiralty.

Revenue cutters influenced yacht design. Single‑masted and gaff‑rigged, they were designed expressly to prevent smuggling and enforce customs regulations. Speed was of paramount importance and led to their special features, which were subsequently copied by yacht designers.

Trinity House was established by Henry VIII as a guild of shipmen and mariners of England, responsible for the lighthouses, lightships and navigational marker buoys around Britain's coasts. Trinity House yachts flew a distinctive jack, the red cross of St George between four ships.

Julian writes about a real incident from history concerning one of the Trinity House yachts in his fourth book, Mutiny

“...the Trinity Yacht slipped through the night to her first rendezvous. By morning it was complete, carried off during the night when there was any chance of success - a daring feat that so easily could have gone wrong...”

 OSCS San Francisco Bay sailing school

 Royal Cork Yacht Club Oldest yacht club in the world

 Royal Yacht Squadron  Cowes week

 New York Yacht Club  Most famous yacht club in America

 Cruising yacht club of Australia  Australia's premier yacht club

 Royal Thames Yacht Club  Oldest sailing club in the UK

 West Wight Potters Celebrating a classic yacht

 Royal Yacht Britannia Forty years of serving the Royal Family

 Museum of yachting  Newport Rhode Island museum preserving the culture of yachting