This is what you have to do to get a Gold Ship. You have to do all these achievements before you can get a Gold Ship.

Achievements:

Always at your service
The High Council
Everyone thinks he has the real thing
We have no time to lose
A story from two islands
Leave trading to the Boss
Hammer and Anvil
Food for the Fishes
Who is this Robin"?!
Guardian of the Realm
The tyranny of evil men
The Quill is mightier than the sword
The Emirate
We are the People
The sea Dog
Merely a continuation of politics
The black fleet

This is the Title/Bonus you get: Knight of the Grail/Gold Ship

The Gems you Earned: 100

Right now you can't get the Golden Ship because some of the needed quests are buggy. Except you use a mod/cheat.
Hoping for the next patch...

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Zomby_Woof65,

I just put it up to help people out because there has been alot of people asking about the gold ship. What they have to do to get it.

You could have saved a lot of time by saying 'you can't get it because the developer is too slack and won't fix simple scripting bugs.'

.. or to save even more time ..

So, nobody ever seen this ship? Are there any differences in speed, cargo slots, attack from the standard flagship?

Personally, as soon as I have an opportunity to build/buy an Oriental Large Tradeship, I replace my flagship with it to use as a general purpose Discovery ship which is perfect for fast transporting large amount of goods. For example, a fully upgraded Oriental Large Tradeship has a capacity of 155 tons per slot and goes really fast.

There is no difference between the Gold ship and the standard flag ship. The Gold ship just looks better.
So i don't care much about it, too much work to get it (if it is possible one day to get it...).