IV. Discourse:  In October 1887, the steamer Vernon set sail from Michigan toward Chicago with about 50 people on board. Likely overloaded with cargo, she never made it.   24   In decades of Great Lakes shipping, more than 2,000 commercial vessels sank while traversing Lake Michigan’s waters.Last summer, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration(NOAA) announced it had designated 962 square miles of the lake as a national marine sanctuary. The Wisconsin Shipwreck Coast National Marine Sanctuary contains the remains of 36 known shipwrecks, including the Vernon, and up to 59 potential shipwrecks that have yet to be discovered.   25   Researchers, shipwreck enthusiasts and coastal community leaders hope that the new sanctuary will spark renewed public interest not just in the wrecks themselves but in the waterways that made them. “For almost all of human history, the world has been connected by water, really, and separated by land,” said Russ Green, NOAA’s regional coordinator. “This is what makes the Great Lakes so special.” The Vernon sank in deep water, and it was not until the summer of 1960 that John Steele and Kent Bellrichard discovered the wreck. Steele and Bellrichard hunted shipwrecks, using surplus military sonar technology, said Brendon Baillod, a maritime historian. They found the Vernon under about 200 feet of water, well preserved by the lake’s cool, fresh water.   26   Ships on the Great Lakes sailed loaded with iron, grain, lumber and coal, often into the late fall and winter, without modern navigation technology or weather forecasting. Some, like the Vernon, carried passengers. “Sailing was even riskier,” said Baillod. He estimates around 50,000 sailors died in the Great Lakes between 1850 and 1900.   27   But sailors were admired for their bravado, and they got paid in cash.

【題組】24.
(A) The sanctuary is the first in Lake Michigan and only the second in the Great Lakes. 
(B) But as archaeological resources, the wrecks have limited time. 
(C) The Vernon’s fate was not unusual. 
(D) Not all of them died in wrecks； some were felled by other occupational hazard, like falling from masts. 
(E) Inside are wooden chalices stacked inside crates, bottles of wine, barrels of potatoes and apples, according to researchers.