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The jetties coming out into the river, and a host of ships in the Middle Ages, little wooden ships ferrying produce across from the Continent and back. (Source)
The structure of the whole sentence is quite confusing to me: how can I understand it?
I looked it up here. I would have picked the fourth meaning,
if you produce an object, you bring it out or present it, so that people can see or consider it
When challenged, he produced a gun.
But produce is not transitive in my example.
You've got to scroll down further on your definition page to:
prod-uce: noun [uncountable]
food or other things that have been grown or produced on a farm to be sold
You see that produce can also be a noun, so it means crops, food, or other things produced on a farm (and, might I add, elsewhere as well.)
Therefore, the sentence means:
The jetties coming out into the river, and a host of ships in the Middle Ages, little wooden ships ferrying things produced on farms across from the Continent and back.
The reason that you are confused is that "produce" (with the stress on the second syllable) is a verb. But "produce" (with the stress on the first syllable) is a noun, and it is the noun that is being used here.
In this context "produce" means "fresh food, vegetables, etc"; basically anything you get from a farm. It is a non-count noun. So your quote can be glossed:
... little wooden ships carrying food across to the continent and back.
If I remember my history I think that wine was carried from France to England, and wool was taken from England to France.
I think a bit part of the problem is that the whole passage has no main verb: it isn't a well-formed sentence, but rather a verbless sentence fragment; one long noun-phrase describing a scene. "Ferrying" is a verb but is active only within a subordinate part; and "produce" as has been noted is here as a noun.
I see that it's from a script. It's common in stage directions to have descriptions of what is to be shown: "A man's apartment, with a window facing trees, and a writing desk on the left". So that's what this is. It's a nice word-picture, rather like we're zooming slowly in what might be a still picture, and then realizing that the boats are actually moving.
