Miss the French ship (4)
I believe the answer is:
lass
'miss' is the definition.
(I know that lass is a type of miss)
'the french ship' is the wordplay.
'the french' becomes 'la' ('the' in French).
'ship' becomes 'SS' (prefix in ship names eg SS Great Britain).
'la'+'ss'='LASS'
(Other definitions for lass that I've seen before include "Girl (of Richmond Hill?)" , "Young woman (-. Eng.)" , "Scottish girl" , "Familiar form of address for female" , "Miss" .)