If i create a new game with a custom race that has the pirate ship style, i can not create a new ship in the designer because no hulls are showing up (the hulls tab is totally blank) - i can use an existing design and edit that.
i then started jumping back to the main menu (not exiting the game itself), and created new games with other factions, after a few tries this bug happened with other factions as well; though i can't tell a pattern.
