Boat

A boat is both an item and a vehicle entity.

Obtaining
Boats can be retrieved by them.

Usage
Press the button on the boat to mount it. A boat can be exited by pressing the key.

Boats move according to the player's control or water currents. Boats move significantly faster than a player can walk on land or water, but are slower than minecarts. If on land, a boat may still be controlled but extremely slowly.

Boats are controlled by moving forward or by using the key to turn it in the direction the player is facing. Boats also respond to the key, to which the boat quickly in the opposite direction the player is facing. When moving fast enough, there will be "water spray" visual effect representing the bow wake.

If you move through an area with only 1 block of air between the water and ceiling, you will take suffocation damage, but can still move anywhere the boat can.

Behavior
Boats are entities. Boats behave much like off-track minecarts; they can be pushed around slowly on solid blocks, are easily pushed around by water currents, and always face the direction they last moved. The difference, however, is that boats act like solid blocks in that they can sit on top of mobs, items and players and entities can stay on top of them.

If a boat runs slowly into another entity such as a player, another boat, or a mob, it will normally bounce off and change direction. Apparently, running into a block will merely stop movement (if the boat does not break). If one crashes a boat into another boat, the boat being ridden will be destroyed while the other one will just bump away.

Boats are annoyingly fragile; they take damage by being hit or crashing into blocks at high speed. After taking enough damage over a short interval, the boat will break. Even in single player, boats commonly crash into land up to 10 meters or more away from where the boat actually is, making boats hard to use in anything but the open ocean. Boats with momentum break thin blocks like lily pads and flat snow, instead of being broken themselves.

Boats do not break when running into Soul Sand at water level, because Soul Sand has a lower top surface so that the boat merely runs aground rather than crashing.

Doors can be used to control the movement of boats, such as blocking them into docks or preventing them from following a current until the door is opened.

Though boats used to float upward in any type of water, flowing or not, downward flowing water will now cause them to become stuck on the bottom.

Creeper explosions will not disintegrate boats being ridden; rather, the boat will return to its item form and the player will fall into the water. This does not, however, prevent explosion damage to the player.

If a boat is placed on land near another block, riding in it can and will cause suffocation damage, death will be reported as " suffocated in a wall"

Drops
Boats drop its item form when attacked. When crashed, however, they drop 3 oak wood planks (regardless of the type of wood that made it) and 2 sticks.

Trivia

 * Using a Splash Potion of Fire Resistance can cause boats to be immune to fire.
 * When riding a boat through lava without it dying, it will attach to the nearest block and will not be ridden like a boat on water.
 * Sand, gravel, anvils and dragon eggs drop when they fall onto a boat.
 * If a mob is stacked on top of a boat in water (such as with the command), the boat can be controlled by that mob.

Gallery

 * A video of a simple boat elevator for transportation
 * A video of a boat placed on lava