This 5 types of clutter:

The first three layers of the ship should be made on a regular grassy field, this will make it easier to start the process. These layers are the following: Crates with the gardening tools, one of the carriage types, and the little birdhouse. With these you can lay out the basic shape of the ship.



The main thing you should start with are the carriages. After those the crates, and than the birdhouses.



When you finished laying these three types of clutter you can start surrounding it with water, add the forks or shovels to the front of it, and it should look like something like this:







As you can see, in this little ship the crates were added after the water, so these steps are interchangeable. Just be prepared that you will need to play a little with the water placement because the map isn't perfectly flat, so it will need some nudges here and there. (Change the water, and water eraser tool to the lowest setting, and try to really slowly add, or take away water where the clutters are not the desired hight. Or more precisely you should play with the water surrounding that point. There will be errors with this, that you simply cannot make disappeare fully.)

So if you pushed through this phase you basically have a solid foundation to build your ship, you can layer it higher with more carriages and ladders. Cover the area with roads and you can build the deck out of fences and so on.






If you putting together multiple floors for the clutters you want to build, it is a pretty good thing to hold down the ctrl button. When you do this, the thing you want to lay down will not snap to something else, it will stay in a free drag state while you move it. (Buildings tend to snap together this way.)

Here's a more finnished up example for this method:

Featured in this creation:
https://steamproxy-script.pipiskins.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3513609206

The removable floor panel often seen on medieval ships:

You only need benches and fences to build it.