The ship viewer on the character select screen is a neat eyecandy feature, but if you play the game from different computers/devices it's often wrong.

It shows the last ship that character was in on the current device, not the ship that character actually has active in the game.

last_meshname=ship_trident_01
last_meshfile=gaf/ship_trident_01.dfs
last_colorindex=114

in your config.ini
It's a client side thing.

Yeah, I know it is. It's just weird and confusing to see one ship and log in to find a totally different ship when the licenses, sector, etc on the same screen all match what the server has.

I agree with Arf. It's an unnecessary, annoying, and confusing inconsistency.

It should be determined and changed in your config.ini when you connect, not when you log in to a character.
So yeah it's a bit buggy.