Night boat involved in nasty end, colliding with ship (8)
I believe the answer is:
darkness
'night' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'boat involved in nasty end colliding with ship' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite see how this works, but
'boat' could be 'ark' (ark is a kind of boat) and 'ark' is located in the answer.
an anagram of 'end' is 'dne' which is within the remaining letters.
'ship' could be 'ss' (prefix in ship names eg SS Great Britain) and 'ss' is located in the answer.
This accounts for all the letters.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for darkness that I've seen before include "Better to light a candle than to curse it, they say" , "Absence of light" , "Evil; lack of light" , "Period of no light" , "See 19" .)