Ship's party received in state (7)
I believe the answer is:
caravel
'ship's' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'party received in state' is the wordplay.
'party' becomes 'rave' (I've seen this before).
'received in' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'state' becomes 'cal' (I've seen this in other clues**).
'rave' placed into 'cal' is 'CARAVEL'.
(Other definitions for caravel that I've seen before include "Spanish ship" , "small boat" .)