Abstract: River bank erosion induced by ship waves can be a serious threat to the land resources and the dykes. Dangers given by the yacht-generated waves usually are neglected because of yacht's small sizes, however, the high speeds of yachts can result in significant damages to the river banks. As there is generally little quantitative information available to assess the magnitude of erosion, the objective of this paper is to establish an available model for estimating the recession of the river bank caused by ship-generated waves and provide an application example of the model. The study includes three main components: field measurement and investigation, laboratory experiment, and numerical modeling. The field measurement consists of soil sampling from banks of the Changgang River in Ezhou city and measurement of the river characteristics; site investigation includes learning about the types of recreational yachts sailing on the Changgang River and their parameters, as well as daily navigation frequencies. The laboratory experiments of the soil samples were carried out to determinate the soil particle size distribution curves and the critical shear stresses, so as to estimate the riverbank erodibility. Finally, the yacht-generated wave factors were calculated, and the numerical modeling of the bank erosion rates of the Changgang River was conducted by using a lateral erosion model, from which, an annual bank recession of the Changgang River was obtained as 54.4 cm, approximately consistent with the field survey result.