The eighteenth century is usually characterised in yachting histories as a period of inactivity. McCallum, for example, evidently drawing on such sources as Phillips-Birt's The History of Yachting, writes that ‘records show that in 1812 there were about 50 pleasure yachts afloat in Britain’. In fact, there is clear evidence, which this chapter will present, of an increasing level of yacht ownership and activity across the eighteenth century.

This increasing visibility of yachting was due to a number of factors, including the need of the Hanoverian monarchs and their families to ‘commute’ between England and Hanover, and the widespread use of yachts on state business. I will discuss these in the first part of this chapter before moving on to the growth of yachting as a leisure sport, most obviously in Cork Harbour, in the South of Ireland, and later on the Exe in Devon. The growth of seaside resorts, at the expense of the inland spa towns, then led to the development of yacht regattas.

The Industrial Revolution's dates are usually given as 1760–1830, but by 1760, it already had a clear momentum. Pioneers had been working on the inventions that underpinned it from much earlier. For example, Thomas Savery had a steam engine to raise water in mines working in 1698. Abraham Darby smelted iron using coke at Coalbrookdale in Shropshire from 1709. A long beam (steam-powered) ‘atmospheric’ engine was built by Newcomen in 1712, the first practical use of steam, with the engine being used in Cornish mines. Newcomen's engine was much improved by James Watt by 1769. However, the first mills relied on water-power and were therefore built in the countryside, along fast-flowing streams and rivers, upstream of harbours and ports. These harbours imported the raw materials the mills needed for the production of their goods, and exported the finished products. So, wealth was coming into ports and harbours from the early eighteenth century.

State Uses of Yachts