Shipbuilding is the construction of ships and other floating vessels. In modern times, it normally takes place in a specialized facility known as a shipyard. Shipbuilders, also called shipwrights, follow a specialized occupation that traces its roots to before recorded history.

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.