This is not so much an instruction but more of an inspiration , i looked around for ways to build a ship both wood and cardboard and in the end came up with this , it can certainly use some more decoration but my son was happy as anything with it anyways, and they all ate within the ship for lunch so it was hit! I incorporated the existing playset to extend the ship part.

Enjoy , extend it and make it your own.

Step 1: The Hull of the Ship

I was lucky enough to have a relative that gets large boxes , this one was 88" x 9" square so when taken apart they came out to be ~3 foot high walls. It was all in one piece so it made it easy to have it all attached, i used garden stakes and some zip ties to hold each wall up.

Some leftover paint and painted the cardboard and added the 'planks' look to it and a porthole... the other side has a cutout for the cannon.

Step 2: Cannon

The cannon was made out of leftover 8" concrete form , spray painted flat black, I tried to make it working i added one of those hand held plunger type water guns attached to end of one side and taped it up finding the right cannon ball was much harder a 5" ball was needed.

this photo was at the end of the day so it was a little droopy :)

Step 3: The Sail

It looked a little plain so i decided to add a sail. I used some 1x2 8ft strips. I made one long and then nailed 2 4' pieces to make the braces. The sail material was made just from a dollar store table cloth, stapled to the mast. if it was windy would just have to cut some slits to keep it from falling over.. .the mast was held in place by being attached to a 3 foot metal garden fence post.