Agitated way the French ship goes after engineers (8)
I believe the answer is:
restless
'agitated' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'way the french ship goes after engineers' is the wordplay.
'way' becomes 'st' (**).
'the french' becomes 'le'.
'ship' becomes 'ss'.
'goes after' says to put letters next to each other.
'engineers' becomes 're' (Royal Engineers).
'st'+'le'+'ss'='stless'
'stless' after 're' is 'RESTLESS'.
(Other definitions for restless that I've seen before include "Always on the move" , "Not relaxed, unsettled" , "Fidgetty" , "Constantly active" , "Worried and uneasy" .)