So, it seems like "ship spinning" is the equivalent of wandering around World of Warcraft capital cities only by way of spamming jump? Thank you for the details.
Dragging the camera (with a mouse down, move and release) would cause it to rotate around the player's ship until some artificial 'drag' decided the spin should slow to a stop. It was one of those innocent and functionally useless UI features, that is surprisingly satisfying to preform.
...I'm not the only one? Oh thank god