The birth of yachting: from royal pleasure boats to a world sport.

Where the word comes from

The English word "yacht" comes from the Dutch jaght, from Middle Low German jacht, short for jachtschip: a fast ship for chasing, from jagen, to hunt. The Online Etymology Dictionary dates its first English appearance to the 1550s, spelled yeaghe. Yachts started as light, fast boats for carrying important people and only later became boats for pleasure and racing.

Charles II and the royal yachts

When Charles II was restored to the English throne in 1660, the City of Amsterdam gave him the yacht Mary, which it had bought from the Dutch East India Company. Royal Museums Greenwich describes her as about 66 ft long with an 18 ft beam, 100 tons burden and six small guns, with a flat, shallow Dutch hull that used leeboards instead of a keel. The museum calls her the first official royal yacht, and notes that later English yachts dropped the leeboards for deeper, finer hulls. Mary was wrecked in the Irish Sea in 1675; Wikipedia adds that she struck The Skerries off Anglesey in fog on 25 March that year and that 35 of the 74 aboard were lost.

According to Wikipedia, Mary was the first of about 27 yachts Charles owned between 1660 and 1685, and he replaced her with the faster Katherine, built by Phineas Pett. Royal Museums Greenwich credits Charles with bringing yachting to England on his return and racing yachts on the Thames.

The first recorded English race: 1661 or 1662?

The date of the first recorded race is not settled. Wikipedia says the diarist John Evelyn recorded a race in 1661 between the royal yachts Katherine and Anne, from Greenwich to Gravesend and back, for a wager. A blog history by Steven R. Larson dates the same race to 1 October 1662, with a wager of 100 pounds, Charles steering Catherine and his brother James, Duke of York, steering Anne. We could not retrieve Evelyn's diary entry itself to settle the date. Samuel Pepys did go by barge to see the King's and the Duke's yachts, with two Dutch yachts, on 14 September 1661, but his diary records no race that day.

The first yacht clubs

Which club is oldest?

The Royal Cork Yacht Club in Ireland is widely called the oldest yacht club in the world, as Afloat puts it. Wikipedia traces it to the Water Club of the Harbour of Cork, founded in 1720 by William O'Brien, 4th Earl of Inchiquin, then 26, and five friends, and based on Haulbowline Island. Per the same source, the club lapsed in 1765, was revived in 1802, received the "Royal" prefix from William IV in 1831, later moved to Cove (now Cobh) and then Crosshaven, and merged with the Royal Munster Yacht Club in 1966.

Russia's Neva Yacht Club makes an earlier claim. Wikipedia reports that it traces its origins to the Nevsky Flot, created by Peter the Great on 12 April 1718 with 141 small vessels for the nobility. Because that fleet was set up by imperial decree rather than as a voluntary club, Wikipedia says Royal Cork's claim is the more widely accepted. Wikipedia also reports that the Imperial St. Petersburg Yacht Club, founded in 1846 with 19 members and five yachts, was the first Russian club to adopt British-style rules.

The Royal Yacht Squadron

The Royal Yacht Squadron says it was founded as "The Yacht Club" on 1 June 1815 at the Thatched House Tavern in St James's, London. It added "Royal" in 1820, when the Prince Regent became George IV, and became the Royal Yacht Squadron in 1833 by command of William IV. Its home is The Castle at Cowes, on the Isle of Wight. Separately, Cowes Week traces its founding to August 1826, when seven cutters raced off Cowes Castle, and it held its bicentenary edition in August 2026.

The New York Yacht Club

The New York Yacht Club was founded on 30 July 1844 by John Cox Stevens and eight other yachtsmen, meeting aboard Stevens's yacht Gimcrack off the Battery in Manhattan. Stevens was elected the first commodore, and three days later the members cruised together to Newport, Rhode Island. Seven years on, a syndicate he led would take the schooner America to England and win the race that became the America's Cup.

Royal Museums Greenwich credits Lord Brassey with the first circumnavigation by a private yacht, in the late 1870s, in the steam-assisted schooner Sunbeam.

Rules and an international body

World Sailing's history records that on 1 June 1868 the Royal Victoria Yacht Club hosted a Yachting Congress of 23 representatives from 14 clubs, which began work on uniform racing rules. In Britain, the Yacht Racing Association was founded in 1875; the RYA, the UK's national body today, says that is its own founding.

The 1906 International Conference on Yacht Measurement in London produced the Metre Rule, which World Sailing says still governs the 12 Metre, 8 Metre and 6 Metre classes. The founding of the international body itself is dated two ways. World Sailing's own history page says the International Yacht Racing Union (IYRU) was formed at the 1906 London conference, and elsewhere on the same page says it was created in Paris in October 1907. Wikipedia gives 14 October 1907, at a meeting at the Yacht Club de France in Paris. The founding members, per World Sailing, were Austria-Hungary, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Holland and Belgium (listed together), Italy, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

For how the sport is run today, see governing bodies and racing rules.

Yachting joins the Olympics

Sailing was on the programme for the first modern Olympics, Athens 1896, but no races were held. Sources give different reasons. World Sailing says high winds prevented a start; Olympics.com says bad weather; Wikipedia says there were no Greek boats and no foreign entries; US Sailing cites both a lack of entries and severe weather.

Sailing's Olympic debut came at Paris 1900, with six classes on the Seine at Meulan and two off Le Havre between 1 and 5 August, according to World Sailing. The boats were not standardised and raced in classes by tonnage; US Sailing counts eight classes, 64 boats and six countries. Swiss sailor Hélène de Pourtalès, crewing on the winning boat in the 1 to 2 ton class, became the first female Olympic champion of the modern Games.

Sailing was left out of St. Louis 1904 and, according to Wikipedia, has been part of every Summer Games since. In 1948 the IOC restricted Olympic sailing to men, although men and women had raced together before. How the Olympic boats changed after that is covered on our technology page, and today's events on Olympic sailing.