Louisiana failed to develop a profitable export staple. The planters raised inferior grades of tobacco and indigo that sold in France for less than the high costs of production and shipment. Shipping was usually scarce and always expensive, because the voyage around Florida and across the Atlantic was very long and dangerously exposed to pirates, sandbars, and hurricanes. Because many mariners refused to sail to Louisiana, planters often could not ship their crop before it spoiled and usually had to pay prohibitive freight charges. Only crown subsidies sustained the plantation sector, and the
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