Minecraft isn't just a game about mining or building.  It's also one of the greatest exploration games of all time... or could be, if players were given the tools necessary for epic voyages across the seas.

Minecraft has desperately needed proper ships since the day the game was launched.  The small single-seater boats available currently are inexcusably unreliable, and utterly uninteresting; they do more to provide adventurers with headaches than inspire players to tackle exploration.  They're fine for exploring small lakes or trudging up rivers.  They'd be great as landing craft from bigger ships.  But that's about it.

A popular request!

Over the years, countless players have requested ships.  Numerous single-player mods, like the famed Archimedes mod, have provided ships to players.  There are even multiplayer Bukkit mods, like Movecraft, that try their best to emulate ships, though these are nefariously unreliable and poorly animated due to the inability of these mods to upload new content to a server's clients.  Suggestion boards related to Minecraft are chock full of requests and ship ideas, but they have thus far gone ignored.  The question about whether this is a desired feature practically answers itself.

Why make a petition about ships?

As was mentioned a moment ago, ships are a very popular request for Minecraft.  But the team at Mojang has said little on the subject, despite this being one of the most requested new features players yearn for.  A petition might help show Mojang the importance of this feature and expedite their efforts to grant it to the millions of players who love this game.

What kind of ships do we want?
An acceptable ship update would include either or both of the following, listed by their desirability:

(A) new seat, helm, engine, and sail blocks, which players can use to craft their own sailing or engine-powered ships.  Sails could be linked together, and when dropped, would push out and propel the ship forward.  Engine blocks would require charcoal, coal, or redstone as fuel, and would make the ship faster.  At bare minimum, the ships would require one sail for every hundred blocks it is made from, and one engine for every thousand blocks.  Players could add seats and chests to the ship for transporting supplies and their friends around the globe, allowing them to go on exploration adventures together.

(B) Craftable or non-craftable prefab ships, which should include, at minimum, a yacht (small, few seats and chests, but fast), a warship (mid-sized, thick hull, preferably with cannons (or just dispensers), and a cargo ship (big, slow, but with tons of chests for storage, and at least four seats).  These could be populated with villager pirates who roam the seas looking to cause trouble; players could essentially hijack the boats from them.  Or maybe they'd just be summoned using a command.  This wouldn't be as cool as proper custom-built ships, but in the very least it would leave the door open for new ships in the future, and establish the architecture for custom ships in the future.

Other features we'd appreciate (maybe later?)

• The ability for players to walk around on moving vessels
• The ability to transport livestock (cows, sheep, pigs, and chickens) onboard ships
• Airship capabilities; the ability to use wool to craft airship balloon blocks, which can be used to provide a ship with flight
• Submarine capabilities; the ability to submerse a ship under the water, and explore those awesome new deep ocean biomes you made in 1.7
• Make them sinkable.  If blocks are damaged/ destroyed by fire, cannon shells, players, etc., the ship takes on water.  If 25% of the ship's total number of blocks are water, the ship will begin to slowly sink, until the damage is repaired and the water is bucketed out.  Fully-sunk ships become shipwrecks at the bottom of the sea
• Other suggestions made in this lengthy ship request article