Sirens in the way of ship (6)
I believe the answer is:
alarms
'sirens' is the definition.
The answer and definition can be both man-made objects as well as being plural nouns.
Maybe you can see an association between them that I don't see?
'in the way of ship' is the wordplay.
'in the way of' becomes 'a la' ('a la', French phrase meaning 'in the style of').
'ship' becomes 'rms' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'ala'+'rms'='ALARMS'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for alarms that I've seen before include "Scares or startles" , "Puts on guard or frightens" , "Flaps" , "Frightens or alerts" , "Clocks that wake sleepers" .)