Steam yacht

A steam yacht is a class of luxury or commercial yacht with primary or secondary steam propulsion in addition to the sails usually carried by yachts.

The English steamboat entrepreneur George Dodd (1783–1827) used the term "steam yacht" on 16 May 1817 albeit in describing PS Thames, ex Duke of Argyle. She was one of the five passenger steamboats then under Dodd's direction, and his description was used in an effort to advertise how luxurious these vessels were-for the general public. Her service on the river had first been reported in a newspaper. At that time, she had not been formally renamed, but was still sailing under the description "Thames steam yacht".

The history of the first three private steam yachts is as follows:

Thomas Assheton Smith II was excluded from the Royal Yacht Club (RYC) for his championship of the steam yacht, eight of which he commissioned between 1830 and 1851. In cooperation with the Scottish engineer Robert Napier, whose Govan, Glasgow yard built a number of them, Smith did much to improve the hull design of steam yachts. After 1856, when the Royal Yacht Squadron (the Club became Squadron in 1833) removed their edict, steam yacht building really began to multiply.

The term "Double Steam Yacht" refers to a type of mechanised fairground swing devised by the English fairground equipment engineer Frederick Savage.

The term "steam yacht" encompasses vessels of two distinct uses, but of similar design.

1. The first is a luxury yacht in the modern sense—a vessel owned privately and used for pleasure or non-commercial purposes. Steam yachts of this type came to prominence from the 1840s to the early-20th century in Europe. The first British royal yacht was Victoria & Albert of 1843. The first in the USA, Vanderbilt's steam yacht North Star, launched in 1854. steam yachts were commissioned by wealthy individuals and often heads of state as extravagant symbols of wealth and/or power. They were usually built with similar hull-lines to clipper ships, with an ornate bow structure and a low, smooth freeboard. Main propulsion usually came from one or two steam engines, later of compound type, or in even later, very large yachts, triple expansion or turbines. Steam yachts usually carried rigging for sails, originally as an auxiliary propulsion system, but later more for show and naval tradition. Private steam yachts were capable of long seagoing voyages, but their owners' needs and habits saw most stay near to the coast. Inland seas such as the Baltic and the Mediterranean were popular areas for using steam yachts.

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