A FORMER furniture maker has finished building from scratch the model of a Chinese vessel which sunk in the 19th century killing more than 1,600 men.

Retired cabinet maker and business owner Derek Mellor took two years to create the Tek Sing - the True Star - using only a picture from a history book.

The novel which he based his findings on, The Legacy of the Tek Sing by Nigel Pickford and Michael Hatchet, tells the tale of a Chinese ship which set sail in 1822 from China bound for Java carrying pottery and immigrants.

The ship was known as one of the last of the Grand Junks, more than over 60 metres in length and 10 metres wide weighing nearly 1,000 tonnes, with just over 1,600 passengers and 200 crew members on board.

But the Tek Sing was never to complete her journey. In what was to become a bigger tragedy than the sinking of the Titanic, the ship floundered on a reef just a short distance from Java and due to her size and the weight of the cargo she sank quickly. Only a few people survived.

Using his imagination and some vague details recorded from the book, Mr Mellor, who lives in Flookburgh, was keen to complete a challenge no one else, to his knowledge, had yet set eyes on.

"There are lots of different models of ships out there that have been built," said Mr Mellor. "But we have been told that I am the first to create a model of the True Star."

His wife Pam said her husband had built other models in the past, including the Almaranta Saldana in 2012, but she was particularly proud of him on this project.

"I'm very proud of him," said Pam. "He's been very clever with coming up with ideas for the ship and has the patience of a saint with this sort of thing. It's always been at the back of his mind to build a model like this, ever since he was a child."

The Tek Sing was re-discovered in 1999 by Captain Mike Hatcher, a British explorer, and with his team he managed to retrieve more than 360,000 pieces of porcelain, most of it in impeccable condition. This makes it the greatest porcelain treasure that has ever been recovered. Several pieces have been acquired by corporations such as Harrods and Mercedes Benz together with the British Museum.

Mr Mellor managed to get two porcelain pieces and they now reside beside the model.

"No one truly knows how old these pieces are but it's incredible that they remained intact for so long. I'm very happy to have managed to obtain a couple," he said.

The model ship was made mainly out of walnut wood, a very delicate piece of wood prone to snapping very quickly, and an old beach mat. Mrs Mellor was quick to point that there was definitely an old necklace of hers that was used for decoration too.