The Datum Report

Occupation 5235 · Skilled trades occupations

Boat and ship builders and repairers

Half of full-time boat and ship builders and repairers in the UK earn more than £33,896 a year, and half earn less.

Boat and ship builders and repairers construct, install and repair wooden structures and fittings, and shape, position, rivet and seal metal plates and girders to form the metal structures and frameworks for marine craft.

How people enter it

Entrants typically possess GCSEs/S grades. Training is usually via apprenticeship including practical experience and technical training. Apprenticeships and vocational qualifications in boat building and relevant aspects of engineering and construction are available at levels 2 and 3.

What the work involves

• examines drawings and specifications to determine job requirements
• uses rules, scribes and punches to mark out metal plate with guidelines and reference points and cuts plates using appropriate tools
• uses machine tools to bend, curve, punch, drill and straighten metal plate as required and positions and aligns metal platework or frame for welding and bolting
• rivets together metal plates and girders, seals seams, smooths welds, fixes metal doors, collars, portholes, tank and hatch covers
• selects and measures appropriate wood and cuts, shapes and drills to specification using saws, planes, chisels and other power or hand tools
• aligns and fixes prepared wood pieces by screwing, nailing, gluing and dowelling to form decking, small wooden marine craft and their interiors and fittings
• maintains and repairs woodwork and fittings

Also called

Boat builder · Fitter (boat building) · Frame turner (ship building) · Laminator (boat building and repairing) · Marine engineer · Ship’s joiner · Shipwright

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for boat and ship builders and repairers, full-time employees, 2024 to 2025. Each point is that year's ASHE April snapshot as published — revisions are not backfilled into earlier years, and a year ONS withheld is a gap rather than a joined line.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Pay by region

Median gross annual pay for full-time employees, ranked, against the UK figure. 1 of 11 regions are published: ONS withholds a cell where the survey sample cannot support it, and those are shown as gaps rather than dropped — an absent region is not a region without the work in it.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Period 2025. Table

Every regional figure

ONS does not publish occupational pay below region. Cells the survey could not support are shown as withheld, with its reason — adding a region split to a specific occupation leaves roughly a tenth of cells publishable.

Common questions

Classified alongside this

Aircraft maintenance and related trades · Rail and rolling stock builders and repairers · Vehicle body builders and repairers · Vehicle paint technicians · Vehicle technicians, mechanics and electricians