Although the ship is fixed by the end of the play, the reader knows from Miranda's opening monologue that it is initially destroyed in the tempest her father has called. In act 1, scene 2, she cries, "Oh, I have suffered / with those that I saw suffer. A brave vessel / who had, no doubt, some noble creature in her / Dash'd all to pieces." Here, Miranda claims to have seen the ship torn apart, perhaps by waves or rocks or some combination of the two. The phrase "all to pieces" implies it did not sink in a salvageable manner.
However, the reader has gathered by the end of the play that Prospero and Ariel have been up to tricks the entire time. In act 5, scene 1, Prospero finds his own personal dramatics coming to an end and sends Ariel "to the King's ship, invisible as thou art / there shalt thou find the mariners asleep / Under the hatches." Without any talk of the ship since it had been sunk, now it is whole enough for Ariel to find sailors asleep under the decks. The Boatswain wonders that their ship, which they'd all assumed doomed only hours before, "is tight and are and bravely rigged as when / [they] first put out to sea." This only seems to add to the confusion, that without explanation the ship is put back to sorts after not only Miranda but all those aboard assumed it to be a wreck. But Ariel says, where only Prospero can hear, "Sir, all this service / Have I done since I went." Ariel is informing Prospero of the work done by the spirit since he left Prospero's side last. So, the reader can infer that it was Ariel who reformed the ship, perhaps despite the first conversation between Prospero and Ariel during act 5.
In reading plays, sometimes questions have no clear answer. The reader simply isn't given all the knowledge and circumstances that would be available in a novel with room for backstory and filler details. That confusion is multiplied when one considers the layered storylines that Prospero weaves in his clever deceptions, aided by Ariel. At the end of the play, as Alonso expresses confusion and doubt, Prospero explains it by telling him, "You do yet taste / Some subtleties o' th' isle, that will not let you / Believe things certain." As Prospero sees it, there are just some subtle magics that make the truth hard to see.
Alonso and the others who shipwreck on the island believe that their boat has been destroyed in the tempest that brought them there. To their surprise, at the end of the play the ship shows up intact and ready to set sail. As the Boatswain says:
our ship—
Which, but three glasses since, we gave out split—
Is tight and yare and bravely rigged as when
We first put out to sea.
Ariel explains to Prospero in an aside that he has done this, earning Prospero's praise. Alonso, however, has questions, thinking the boat emerging unscathed from the tempest is odd or, as he puts it, "not natural." He presses the boatswain for more information. The boatswain states that the men were fast asleep under the boat's hatches when they were awakening by loud shrieks, howling, and jinglings. When they got up and went up to the deck, they found the ship "all in her trim" or back in good shape. Prospero later promises the travelers safe sailing home.
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