Definitions

shǒu bow of a ship

Etymology

The head  of a ship  also provides the pronunciation

About

The character 艏 is a nautical term for the bow or front of a watercraft. It is a phono-semantic compound: the left component 舟 (boat) provides the semantic category, while the right component 首 (shǒu), meaning "head", supplies both the pronunciation and an additional semantic layer. The combination of "boat" and "head" logically forms a word for the vessel's leading section.