Lego shipwreck models go on display in Chatham

A Lego model of the RMS Titanic will be among those to go on display at a new exhibition

Some of the world's most famous shipwrecks will be brought to life at a Lego exhibition which opens this weekend in Kent.

More than 170,000 Lego bricks have been used to make eleven models of eight sunken ships which go on display at Chatham's Historic Dockyard from 8 March.

The models, which took more than 1,000 hours to build in Australia before being transported over to the UK, will show more intricate details of the shipwrecks in miniature form.

Helen Brown, collections and documentations officer at the Historic Dockyard, said the models would help to explore the "inspiring" stories of the ships and the people behind them.

Among the ships on display in Lego form will be HMS Terror and HMS Erebus which were trapped in ice and wrecked seeking the North West Passage after sailing out of Kent in May 1845.

Helen Brown, of the Historic Dockyard, called the stories behind the Lego models "inspiring".

Ms Brown said 20,748 bricks went in this model alone.

She said the model depicted when the crew "had been stuck for some time and had to survive a further two winters" before they abandoned the ships and tried to make their way to safety.

Historian and broadcaster Dan Snow added: "It's a really good depiction of their final moments, how isolated and brutal that environment was and how the crews faced an impossible struggle for survival."

Other ships on display include the Titanic and the Uluburun, a Bronze Age shipwreck found in Turkey.

The models will be on display until 31 August.