How did the french explorers learn how to make boats suitable for the coastal waters, rivers and lakes?

It might be said that the French explorers learnt how to make boats suitable for the coastal waters, rivers and lakes when they were at the great Lakes. They decided to build small sailing- ships to travel the entire length of the Missouri and the Mississippi River to New Orleans on the golf of Mexico. They built native birch-bark canoes and large rafts.

In the late fifteenth century, a major world power that established colonies in the era of old imperialism was france or germany or spain. their colonial activity was mainly limited to america or africa or asia.