Nose is broken in ship's drinking bouts (8)
I believe the answer is:
sessions
'drinking bouts' is the definition.
(drinking sessions)
'nose is broken in ship's' is the wordplay.
'broken' indicates anagramming the letters.
'in' is an insertion indicator.
'ship' becomes 'SS' (prefix in ship names eg SS Great Britain).
'nose'+'is'='noseis'
'noseis' anagrammed gives 'ession'.
'ession' going inside 'ss' is 'SESSIONS'.
(Other definitions for sessions that I've seen before include "meetings or series of meetings" , "Sittings, terms" , "US composer" , "Comedian" , "Periods of sustained drinking" .)