Several parts combine into one character.

船 is a phono-semantic character: 舟 (boat) for meaning and the 㕣 on the right (the sound of 沿) for sound. 舟 is a side view of a small dugout boat, and with the added sound it came to denote a larger "ship." (It is the higher-frequency everyday counterpart to the 舟/boat entry.)

Korean hanja-sound "seon": 船舶 (seonbak, vessel), 漁船 (eoseon, fishing boat), 造船 (joseon, shipbuilding), 乘船 (seungseon, to board a ship), 汽船 (giseon, steamship). The 造船 of 造船業 (shipbuilding) is written with entirely different characters from the country name 朝鮮 (Joseon).

Mandarin: chuán, 2nd tone. 船 (chuán, ship), 轮船 (lúnchuán, steamship), 帆船 (fānchuán, sailboat), 渔船 (yúchuán, fishing boat), 宇宙飞船 (yǔzhòu fēichuán, spacecraft). Japanese: on-reading セン (sen), kun ふね (fune) and ふな (funa). 船 (fune, ship), 船長 (senchō, captain), 風船 (fūsen, balloon), 船便 (funabin, sea mail). Before a compound ふね shifts to ふな — 船便, 船乗り.

Characters with the 舟 (boat) radical all relate to ships — 航 (to sail), 般 (to turn), 艦 (warship), 舶 (large ship).

Memory aid: a boat (舟) plus a sound element (㕣) — the larger ship grown from the dugout canoe.