The Tek Sing was a large three-masted Chinese ocean-going junk which sank on 6 February 1822, in an area of the South China Sea known as the Belvidere Shoals.

The book The Legacy of the Tek Sing, authored by the vessel's salvor Michael Hatcher and maritime historian Nigel Pickford, suggests her Chinese name to be 的惺, meaning "True Star".

[6] Sailing from the port of Amoy (now Xiamen in Fujian, China), in 1822, the Tek Sing was bound for Batavia, Dutch East Indies (now Jakarta, Indonesia) laden with a large cargo of porcelain goods and 1,600 Chinese immigrants.

After a month of sailing, the Tek Sing's captain, Io Tauko, decided to attempt a shortcut through the Gaspar Strait between the Bangka-Belitung Islands, and ran aground on a reef.

The next morning, February 7, the English East Indiaman Indiana, captained by James Pearl and sailing from Indonesia to Borneo, passed through the Gaspar Strait.

According to UNESCO's Silk Road Programme listing of shipwrecks, "The Tek Sing wreck could have given testimony to one of the biggest catastrophes in the history of seafaring: the sinking of this large junk, that occurred in February 1822 on a journey between the port of Amoy (now Xiamen, China) and Batavia, Dutch East Indies (now Jakarta, Indonesia), took about 1,500 people—mostly Chinese immigrants—to the bottom of the sea.