I tried looking up why she's portrayed as a ghost in this strip...

Hatsushimo is the least popular of all the Kanmusu girls, since she doesn't really have any gimmicks of her own, and is a middle-of-the-pack girl in the generally under-appreciated Mutsuki class. For a while, on Danbooru, she only appeared in "absolutely everyone" group images.

She also has the dubious distinction of being the last kanmusu to die in WW2, dying by naval mines dropped by US planes in her own home waters, so she doesn't even get the distinction of being one of the tiny few surviving destroyers. (And lived through the often epically-recreated Ten-Go that sank Yamato, but not as famously as Yukikaze lived through it.)

Because of this, her only status is as a really unlucky ship that everyone else forgot about.

She's part of the Hatsuharu-class so her companion ships are Hatsuharu, Nenohi, and Wakaba. If anything, I think it's related to her name (first frost) and how ghosts are cold, her comparably generic girl qualities aside.

NWSiaCB said:

Because of this, her only status is as a really unlucky ship that everyone else forgot about.

talkin about ironically now she is the luckiest ship