See: Captains' Council.
There were twelve families in Traveler I under Captain Thorkild Erling. When a ship becomes overcrowded, its young crew members found a new one. After three hundred years, there are over thirty ships, including Traveler III, each carrying an exogamous tribe of about fifteen hundred. Each captain is elected from within a single family. Wives join their husbands' ships. The President of the Captains' Councils is always the Captain of the Traveler, currently Traveler Thorkild Helmuth.
An entire sub-series could have been written about Nomadic history.
Kaor, Paul!
ReplyDeleteArrangements like these makes me frustrated, because they don't really make sense if FTL is practical (for reasons you already know). But they do make sense if STL is assumed--but this is just one of the flaws I find with the Psychotechnic series. One I suspect Anderson himself would agree with.
Ad astra! Sean