a despatch boat

An extra  boat  also provides the pronunciation

Components

Meaning component
zhōu boat
Meaning component
I

Character Evolution

Seal form
Seal Shuowen ~100 AD
Regular Modern

Historical Pronunciations

Old Chinese
Zhengzhangla

說文解字

艅艎,舟名。从舟余聲。經典通用餘皇。

Sources

Readings & variants
Unicode
Historical pronunciations
Zhengzhang Shangfang
Historical images
Academia Sinica