In addition to sharp imagery that conjures nightmarish visions at the conclusion of the poem, "The Yachts" uses an extended metaphor to convey Williams's thoughts about the potentially devastating effects that wealth and power have on the less fortunate.
In the beginning, the yachts (like wealth and power) are seen only as a positive image. They are "scintillant in the minute/brilliance of cloudless days" and "appear youthful, rare/as the light of a happy eye, live with the grace/of all that in the mind is fleckless, free and/naturally to be desired."
Here Williams presents the image: Wealth and those who have it equate to a life of ease. Additionally, wealth is a natural desire that men strive for. It's beautiful and produces feelings of contentment.
However, this metaphor finds new meaning as the tone shifts at the end. Once the race starts, waves (a metaphor for difficulties) strike at the boats. This can't slow them down, for they are "too/Well made." After all, these are yachts, a symbol of power and wealth in themselves. Wealth cannot be touched by mere waves.
And then the waves turn into literal bodies, "a sea of faces about them in agony, in despair." In their quest for victory, the yachts must cut through bodies, people who have been tossed to the side. This ocean of people is a metaphor for the poor and those without the fortunes of the extreme upper classes.
This sea of people cries out, "beaten, desolate." But the yachts do not care and merely cut through them in their quest.
This social commentary was written near the end of the Great Depression, and Williams had undoubtedly seen much suffering in the world around him as wealthy families amassed fortunes at the expense of the lower classes, who were struggling to survive. The metaphor of a yacht race used throughout the poem conveys one of the great "horror[s] of the race"—the human race. Greed and a quest for material gain can drive people to sail right over those who are suffering or who aren't as fortunate.
In "The Yachts," Williams uses a vivid metaphor to describe the sea in which the yacht race takes place. A metaphor is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to something to which it is not literally applicable. So here, for instance, Williams compares the waves to a sea of bodies, of faces in agony and despair. These waves—these bodies—are brutally sliced to pieces by the yachts as they cut through the water in search of victory.
Like life itself, this is a competitive race in which only the strong can survive. The waves are merely an object of nature to be used by man for his own ends. As man-made objects, the yachts could be said to symbolize the control that man exerts over the natural world, often without heed to the consequences of his actions. The yachts just "pass over" the waves, in much the same way that man blithely goes about exploiting nature without realizing just what it is that he's doing.
https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-yachts/
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