Mother Captain

In tiderider culture, the matriarch of the family and the captain of the fleet are the same person, called the Mother Captain.

Qualifications

No one gets to be Mother Captain without being an experienced sailor, nor without the respect of the family and crew.  Someone who wants to be captain should be able to navigate family conflicts as well as stormy seas.

Requirements

Nearly all the women in any given family fleet share the same bloodline.  However, Mothers Captain come only from those "closest to the mast"; that is, descended within three maternal generations from any other Mother Captain.  Those women make up the mother ship's command succession, and sometimes subcaptains of the family fleet's business ships.

Responsibilities

The Mother Captain is responsible for the safety of the fleet and the prosperity of the family.  She is in charge of appointing duties to those best capable of carrying them out.

Grounds for Removal/Dismissal

A family might well mutiny under a Mother Captain who makes too many unpopular decisions.  This does not usually take the form of a mob uprising.  Instead, sailors will disregard orders from the captain, or else obey only after being given the same order by another deck officer--or a junior sailor, if they're feeling especially petty.  At that point it is up to the Mother Captain to find out what the grievances are and address them, or risk losing her authority by common agreement.
It is common for a Mother Captain to resign after the family suffers a financial or natural disaster, even if she could not possibly have prevented it.  The bad-luck stigma can even prevent her descendants from being considered for Mother Captain in the future.

Equates to

Warden