Ghostly vessels

1. Does "Ghostly vessels" mean "Forms that look like ships"?

2. Does "stuff that makes up the paintings" imply the subjects like the ships and the conflicts that are depicted in the paintings?

Context:

American Cy Twombly’s memorial goes very far back in history to the Battle of Lepanto in 1571. Lepanto (2001) was the artist’s response to the fiery sea battle that rescued Europe from the Ottoman Empire. It was there, off the coast of Turkey, that European forces led by the Venetians destroyed the Turkish fleet. Twombly’s composition consists of a series of twelve large panels and begins and ends with a conflagration. The work is colourful yet opaque; in some respects it resembles Monet’s water-lily paintings as New York’s Museum of Modern Art exhibited them before its renovation. Ghostly vessels drift across giant canvases whose dripped paint evokes the narrative of history and the stuff that makes up the paintings. The scratches, marks, and fine cracks are emblematic of wounds from fighting.