I created a brand new single player world under 1.8 with cheats enabled so I could quickly go into creative and give myself a boat, a bow and a five arrows. I then left creative and went back into survival mode, set the boat on a small pond that was nearby, and proceeded to shoot 3 or 4 arrows at a cactus that was about 10 blocks away. The arrows seemed to go no where. I heard a splash of water after shooting the first arrow and a second later I heard a thunk as if the arrow just hit my boat or a tree trunk, the arrow was then returned to my inventory. I was in very shallow water one or two blocks deep at the most.
This is the primary ranged weapon in Minecraft. I find it to be a critical bug that this weapon is useless when fired from a boat.
While this may be a duplicate of other 1.8 snapshots and pre-releases this one is against a released version of Minecraft. So maybe this way it will get some more visibility--Bob
Duplicate of MC-51126