Opposite to Patrician a captain does not require any trading experience to establish automatic trade routes. Nonetheless you should know the different experience fields a captain can be improved in.

Captains can gain experience in six different categories:

	Experience	Effect	Increased by…
	Battle	increased damage in naval battles	won naval battles
	Trade	shorter stopping times in harbours for automatic trade routes	trade (automatically or manually)
	Combat	increase damage for boarding fights and town capture	won boarding fights
	Navigation	increase sailing speed	travelling on the sea
	Ship building	shorter repair times	repairing ships in the dockyard
	Visibility	increased sight radius	using the patrol mode

Every experience can get improved by visiting an instructor in the towns tavern all over the Caribbean Sea.