sentences:  The settlement consisted of a fort, a chapel, government-owned warehouses, and residences.The island served as a major trading depot where goods from Saint-Domingue (Haiti), Mexico, Cuba and France were unloaded and a short-lived fur trade was conducted.Before a channel was dredged, Mobile Bay was too shallow and its sandbars too treacherous for ocean-going vessels to travel up the bay and Mobile River to Fort Louis de La Louisiane.