© Copyright Simon Richards and Newburgh Sailing Club 2023
4000 BCE Phoenicians and Egyptians sail under cloth sails on single log and simple long narrow sailboats.
3000 BCE – 900 Square sails are common
2000 BCE Extensive sailing trading networks starts at the Mediterranean Sea. Iceboats in Scandinavia
1200 BCE Greek and Phoenician big cargo ships along the Mediterranean
500 BCE Phoenicians built ships with two big masts
100 BCE The Roman Empire has largest cargo and passenger ships of 180 by 45 feet
400s First catamarans along the Southeast Asian coasts
900 Lanteen and Triangle sails are used
1000 – 1200 The Vikings built 80 feet long and 17 feet wide sailboats for war, trading and colonizing
1000 Norse explorer Leif Eiriksson probably the first European to land in North America
1200 First viking longboats and British merchant sailboats are made with small holes from which bowmen could fire their guns
15th century The Barque or later Bark with sails running breadthways
1492 Italian navigator Christopher Columbus lands in the Americas
1497 Voyage of Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama from Europe to India
1500 – 1650 Sail makers start using flax fibre to create sails
1500 Governments accept private sailing warships -
1512 Portuguese maritime explorer Ferdinand Magellan sails from Spain in order to find a western route to the Spice Islands of Indonesia.
But he travels from the west of Africa to southern America
1660 King Charles II introduces sport sailing in England. Dutch shipyards give British King Charles a small sailboat, named the Royal Yacht Mary
1680 The Barca-
17th century The Bermuda rig or Marconi rig with mast and rigging is created in Bermuda
1720 World's first yachting club founded in Ireland, the Water Club of Cork
1760 HMS Victory is constructed for of the British Royal Navy, and is used at the Battle of Trafalgar with Commander Lord Nelson.
Now in Portsmouth as a museum.
1768 – 1771 Explorer James Cook is the first to cross over through Cape Horn, through the Pacific and discover east coast of the continent of Australia and New Zealand
1790 First iceboat at the Hudson River in New York
1797 Edmund Hartt Shipyard launches the USS Constitution of the US Navy
18th Century Barquetine vessels with three or more masts are built
1830 From now on flax is replaced by cotton
1844 The New York Yacht Club is founded
1851 – 1983 U S sailors win numerous international sailboat races of the America Cup
1851 First Annual Regatta around the Isle of Wight between American and British competitors
1860 Yoal aka Ness Yoal used in the Shetland Islands
1884 The Fisherman's Wharf builds the first American Felucca traditional wooden sailing boats, normally used in the Red Sea and along the Nile.
1869 The Cutty Sark merchant clipper is built by Scott & Linton shipyard. Now in dry dock at Greenwich near London
1878 Russell and Company in Port Glasgow, Inverclyde, Scotland builds the four masted full rigged Falls of Clyde. Now a museum ship in Honolulu, Hawaii
1895 Hans Bendixsen builds the schooner C.A. Thayer for the lumber trade at the American west coast
19th Century Sailing becomes an Olympic sport in Paris
1902 The German steel hulled five masted ship-
1904 William Hamilton builds the four masted steel Kurt -
1906 The Transpacific Yacht Race to Hawaii ocean race is created by Hawaiian King Kalakaua
1911 The four masted barque Peking is constructed in Hamburg, Germany by Blohm & Voss
1920 First aerodynamics designs for increasing speed
1927 Echevarrieta y Larrinaga shipyard in Cadiz, Spain constructs the four masted topsail, steel-
Named after Spanish explorer Juan Sebastián Elcano
1928 The Santa Cruz Yacht Club is founded in California
1930 The Italian Navy Shipyard designs the full rigged three masted steel hull Amerigo Vespucci tall ship
1933 The three mast barque Gorch Fock I, formerly known as Tovarishch and Gorch Fock, is launched as Kriegsmarine school ship
1936 The USCGC Eagle barque United States Coast Guard training cutter is constructed by Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg for the German Kriegsmarine
1949 The Optimist Dinghy is introduced by Clark Mills
1949 Jack Holt designs the GP14
1950 The two masted sailing craft Yawl is prepared for ocean racing
1956 The Sail Training International Race Committee organizes the first Cutty Sark Tall Ships' Races.
1956 Jack Holt designs the Solo
1957 Gordon Douglass invents the Thistle and the Highlander
1958 The Daily Sailer is built by George O'Day and the Flying Scot by Gordon Douglass
1960 German engineer Wilhelm Pröls invents the Dynaship or Dyna Rig concept. The 12-
1962 The Ensign is designed by Carl Alberg
1967 Francis Chichester makes a nonstop around the world solo sailing tour in the Golden Globe race. He is the first in the history of the sailboat
1971 The Laser invented by Bruce Kirby and the Sabre 28 is built by Roger Hewson
1972 Hobie Alter creates the Hobie 16
1976 The J-
1979 The Sonar is designed Bruce Kirby
1981 The Irish national sail training vessel Asgard II is launched
1983 Australia wins the America Cup for the first time in sailboat history. The J-
1987 The US wins the the America Cup
1990s Hobie Cat creates the twin sail trimaran TriFoiler
1995 – 2000 New Zealand wins the America Cup
1997 The Whitbread Race becomes the Volvo Ocean Race
20th Century The steel-
2003 Switzerland wins the America Cup. The largest single-
2004 Royal Huisman Shipyard the clipper-
2006 Two of the largest private sailing yachts in the world are built.
The Eos, a three masted Bermuda rigged schooner at the German Lürssen yard and the Maltese Falcon clipper for American entrepeneur Tom Perkins
2009 Hydroptère breaks the outright world record, sustaining a speed of 52.86 knots (97.90 km/h) for 500m in 30 knots of wind
2009 John Cameron and Peter Low become the first ever winners of “The Fourteen” at Newburgh Sailing Club
