Thanks all.
I will try bigboywooly's suggestion first to see if I can identify which ship/file is causing the problem. If not, I will have to look at the eqp files or take jimbuna's idea of loading them one by one. I took a back-up before I installed the new ships so if it comes down to it, I may just overwrite the files and start adding in the new ships again and test it after adding each new one - I'm sure it must be one of them that is causing the problem somewhere.
At least the game is working, which is the important thing !!
Thanks for your help.
Prince Namor
Sub-Mariner