To get ships without paying for them do the following. Create a new admiral and then start constructio on a ship, it doesn't matter if you run out of money.

When you have completed it (or run out of money), go to the fleet screen and export the ship. Now, go to the options menu and delete the admiral you just used. Create a DIFFERENT admiral and go to the fleet screen of this admiral.

Import your ship and bingo, you've got your ship without paying for it (or if you ran out of money, continue building it and then repeat the procedure remembering to use a different admiral every time)