There are two kinds of people in the world -- those who grow misty and get a faraway look in their eye in the presence of genuinely fine nautical paintings, and those who don't.

If you're one of the latter, we're finished here.

If, however, you can't get enough of oil paintings of clipper ships racing through white-capped seas, or of sloops fighting current and wind as ruinous lee shores loom just at the canvas's edge, you're in luck. Bonham's on New Bond Street in London is offering scores of 18th, 19th, and 20th century marine paintings for auction on February 27, including Antonio Nicolo Gasparo Jacobsen's intensely vivid Young America (£10,000 - 15,000), plus works by the likes of C.J. Sartorius, William Callow, and the Italian Eduardo Federico de Martino (appointed "Marine Painter-in-Ordinary" by Queen Victoria in 1895).