D&D 5E So...keelboats

[Eltab]

I've read Lewis and Clark's Journals. 2 keelboats plus 6 or so canoes moved 50 expedition members plus some local guides (Sacajawea and family) plus a few tons of supplies. Neither Lewis nor Clark were very specific about further details (drat).

Variant keelboat: canalboat. No sails, pulled by one donkey (cheap freight slowboat) up to three horses (fast and fancy passenger craft). Use the Erie Canal locks as a standard size - I really should go look that up - the boats are built to fill the space. Gives you something for any river or lake (using 10-foot poles to push along in shallow water).

 

[Tonguez]

I don't know what history books you have been reading (perhaps produced by the Chinese Communist party?) but that's rubbish. The ancient Chinese achieved many things, but great explorers they weren't. The Polynesian people travelled much further in that part of the world - their ships where basic, but their navigation was far superior. As for the vikings, they explored the Mediterranean and North Africa as well as crossing the Atlantic. And they went to (and settled) Russia too, because longships can also navigate rivers and be carried over land by their crew.

Um Polynesian ships weren’t basic, they were 60 ft plank built catamarans on dugout hulls, with v shaped hulls designed to create hydrodynamic lift and a jet stream effect and v shaped sails designed to maximise speed, indeed the crab claw design has been tested as the most effective design ever and has been adapted to modern yatch design.
Indeed it’s likely that the Sail (along with Kites) were first invented in SEAsia by the ancestors of Polynesians.

also the best ‘Chinese’ sailors were from SEAsia too

 

[Tonguez]

Also it does appear Keelboat is trying to combine two different boats

1 the American Keelboat is a narrow riverboat

2 the English Keelboat which is a small to midsized sailboat used for coastal and estuary freight