This is not "a man" named
Theseus and he does not own the
boat nor hire the
carpenter. Theseus was the legendary king of
Athens and slayer of the
Minotaur. His
ship was preserved in Athens long after him, but as time passed it had to be
repaired and
replaced bit by bit. It was a traditional
sophistical question whether it was the same ship, and if not, when it ceased to be, or would cease to be.
Aristotle discussed this.
The image was borrowed for a rather different purpose by W.V.O. Quine, who talked about mending one's ship while at sea: because our coherent system of beliefs all fit together with no one subset underpinning the rest (he claimed), revising our beliefs in a fundamental way, as in a paradigm shift, requires the equivalent of replacing much of the boat while it's still in use.