Williams, James C. (Author)
Icon: Journal of the International Committee for the History of Technology
Volume: 19
Pages: 132-192
Although maritime technology is a widely studied field, sailing as a leisure activity largely has been ignored by historians. Before 1900, sailboats of all sizes were primarily workboats, technologies of production, and only the wealthy participated in sport sailing. As industrialisation created a middle class of businessmen, bankers, merchants and managers, members of this new class joined the sport and organised sailing or yacht clubs, each of which launched little fleets of sailing canoes or other small sailboats. During the first part of the twentieth century, sailing aficionados and professional boat builders designed scores of small boats for recreational sailing, and with a greatly expanding middle class after World War II, the market for recreational sailboats (both small and large) grew explosively. Technological innovation played an essential role in the evolution and growth of sailing as play, from the introduction of fibreglass (GRP) boats and stitch-and-glue wood construction, to changes in rigging, hardware, electronics and other sailing paraphernalia. This essay, with a focus on the U.S., examines the growth of sailing as a recreational activity since the mid-nineteenth century and its transition from a craft-based to an industrial technology. It also suggests two aspects of consumer interaction with technology that are evident in sailing-based technology as play. First, the point of interaction between leisure sailors and boat builders - what the historian Ruth Schwartz Cowan might call the 'consumption junction' - played an important role in determining the success or failure of boats. Second, sailing boats and much boat building progressively became what historian Rachel Maines calls a 'hedonised' technology; put simply, the engagement with sailing of most sailors as well as small, amateur and, sometimes, semi-professional boat builders is no longer a practical matter, one focused on efficient production and work, but a leisure activity focused on pleasure.
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