SEARSPORT – New England is blessed with a number of coastal museums devoted to presenting the nautical history of the region – and the world, considering that many of the shipping routes that circled the globe connected with the northeast edge of America. Over the years, one of the finest of these venues, the Penobscot Marine Museum, has offered a wide range of engaging and educational exhibitions and programs, from sailors’ valentines to 19th century shipboard photographs to Hollywood pirates.

Part of the museum’s mission is to interpret its own extensive collection of marine art. “Down to the Sea in Painted Ships,” on view in the Carver Gallery through Oct. 12, presents 40 of the museum’s best marine paintings, all from the 19th century. Kathryn Campbell, the museum’s former curator, organized the exhibition before she moved to England last year. Benjamin Fuller, her successor, has tweaked the presentation, reviewing the literature and adding a painting and three ship models. In its present manifestation, the show shines.

The exhibition opens with four large-scale vertical paintings by Joghem de Vries that show whaling activities in the Arctic. I learned from a well-informed docent, Barbara Perry, that these canvases came from the Hearst estate, had been in storage for 72 years, had their original pine frames and may have once upon a time been a single monumental picture. The paintings have a fantastic air about them; one imagines the Dutch artist in his studio imagining his countrymen harvesting whales among icebergs, with polar bears, seabirds and seals looking on.

Among the jewels in the museum’s marine art crown are its holdings of paintings by Thomas and James Buttersworth, British-born father and son painters of sailing vessels active from the late 1700s to the late 1800s (James died in 1894). Thomas specialized in naval scenes, including sea battles. His painting of the 38-gun British frigate HMS Sea Horse capturing the French frigate La Sensible off the coast of Sicily in June 1798 has an illusionist quality to it: The fight is at such close quarters that one ship seems to blend into the other.

James Buttersworth, who moved to America in the 1840s, furthered his father’s sense of drama and mood, employing atmospheric effects and narrative elements. Looking at his paintings of American ships in distress, with crews from shore attempting rescues, one recognizes the subject matter that would be later exploited to even greater dramatic effect by Winslow Homer. James also produced unmatched images of racing yachts, their acres of sail aglow against glowering skies.

Ship portraits in general run the gamut from rather stiff depictions to more lively representations. Antonio Jacobsen’s dynamic treatment of the sails of the yacht Defender is a harbinger of certain 20th century marine masters, such as Lionel Feininger.

The meticulous re-creation of complex riggings in many of the paintings and in the ship models brings to mind a passage from Alexander Laing’s 1930 novel, “End of Roaming.” The main character, a novice sailor, states, “It was a joy to learn the function of every line and sail – an amazement to find how simple the intricate mass of canvas and cordage became after the fundamental principles of its use were understood.”

Perry, the aforementioned docent, helped engage younger visitors by asking them to find a goat on one of the ships in the show (I won’t give the answer away). This game leads to greater scrutiny of the paintings, and also to greater appreciation. Another possible exercise might be to identify some of the flags and pennants, for each ship flies special colors.

It is also interesting to compare and contrast the color of the sea and the pattern of waves as one moves from canvas to canvas. The configuration and palette of the sea seem inexhaustibly varied, which accounts in large part for the centuries-old fascination of artists with marine subjects – and which in turn underlies our own modern-day wonder at ships sailing across the horizons of time.

The Penobscot Marine Museum is open Monday-Friday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. and Sunday noon-5 p.m. For information, call 548-2529.