How to do parenting with a clone gameObject?

Hi All,

Help needed!
I have this scenario whereby my FleetManager instantiated four ships when it is playede in Unity.
Four of the ships are clone gameObject.
On the other hand, I have a FlockManagerChinese which instantiated a group of characters.
All the 50 characters are also clone gameObject controlled by a cube called CenterChi.

One of the four ships will start sailing and I want the 50 characters to be attached to the ships so that it looks like the characters are on the ship and go together with the sailing animation of the ship until it reaches the pier.

By putting the CenterChi as a child of FleetManager in the hierarchy is not good enough as the ships gameObject are cloned.
Is there any proposed solution that you can suggest?

Thanks in advance,
Kim

simply set the parent VIA THE TRANSORM,

transform.parent = whaevetr;

to keep track of items in a pool, you must do it like this

read the long answer. Cheers Kim !