Until recently, with the development of complex non-maritime technologies, a ship has often represented the most advanced structure that the society building it could produce. Some key industrial advances were developed to support shipbuilding, for instance the sawing of timbers by mechanical saws propelled by windmills in Dutch shipyards during the first half of the 17th century. The design process saw the early adoption of the logarithm (invented in 1615) to generate the curves used to produce the shape of a hull, especially when scaling up these curves accurately in the mould loft.

Shipbuilding and ship repairs, both commercial and military, are referred to as naval engineering. The construction of boats is a similar activity called boat building.

Illustrative image (internet)

The dismantling of ships is called ship breaking.

The earliest evidence of maritime transport by modern humans is the settlement of Australia between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago. This almost certainly involved rafts, possibly equipped with some sort of sail.  Much of the development beyond that raft technology occurred in the "nursery" areas of the Mediterranean and in Island Southeast Asia. Favoured by warmer waters and a number of inter-visible islands, boats (and, later, ships) with water-tight hulls (unlike the "flow through" structure of a raft) could be developed.  The ships of ancient Egypt were built by joining the hull planks together, edge to edge, with tenons set in mortices cut in the mating edges. A similar technique, but with the tenons being pinned in position by dowels was used in the Mediterranean for most of Classical antiquity. Both these variants are "shell first" techniques, where any reinforcing frames are inserted after assembly of the planking has defined the hull shape.  Carvel construction then took over in the Mediterranean. Northern Europe used clinker construction, but with some flush-planked ship-building in, for instance, the bottom planking of cogs. The north-European and Mediterranean traditions merged in the late 15th century, with carvel construction being adopted in the North and the centre-line mounted rudder replacing the quarter rudder of the Mediterranean. These changes broadly coincided with improvements in sailing rigs, with the three masted ship becoming common, with square sails on the fore and main masts, and a fore and aft sail on the mizzen.

Ship-building then saw a steady improvement in design techniques and introduction of new materials. Iron was used for more than fastenings (nails and bolts) as structural components such as iron knees were introduced – examples existing in the mid-18th century and greater use from the mid-19th century. This was partly led by the shortage of "compass timber", the naturally curved timber that meant that shapes could be cut without weaknesses caused by cuts across the grain of the timber.  Ultimately, whole ships were made of iron and, later, steel.