[peabody]

i"m a bit busy right now, but I may be able to figure it out and at least try it in a backup file as a mod and see what happens. One thing you should do though is look at the countries and see what is in there. One example, you list Italy but the flags.dat lists Italian. So if you want any existing boats to have the flags with a mod they will have to have the same name.
One other thing that doesn't make sense is that some countries list:

country_m.tga
country FLG

country.tga
country FLGC

I thought the one with the _m was military and the FLGC was civilian.

But then another is just the opposite:

country_m.tga
country FLGC

country.tga
country FLG

So I don't know if that is a mistake or not. So while you finish and I find time you can find information on the file.

Peabody