Bail out a ship before it's broken to pieces (6)
I believe the answer is:
assist
'bail out' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'a ship before it's broken to pieces' is the wordplay.
'ship' becomes 'SS' (prefix in ship names eg SS Great Britain).
'before' is a charade indicator (letters next to each other).
'it's broken to pieces' becomes 'ist' (I am not sure about this - if you are sure you should believe this answer much more).
'a'+'ss'+'ist'='ASSIST'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for assist that I've seen before include "Serve" , "Give help" , "benefit" , "Be helpful to" , "Work with N help" .)