About Itchenor
The following received from historian and writer Dr. Ian Friel of Chichester, UK:
Itchenor is a small village within the Chichester Harbour area, a few miles from Chichester itself. The Harbour is a very beautiful area, managed by a conservation body (there's a lot of info on their website: http://www.conservancy.co.uk/learn/Places/timelines.htm)
The shipyard was built in the 1740s, but its output was never very large, and it could only build ships of up to 1,000 tons or so, because of the shallowness of the channel, and of the entrance to Chichester Harbour. The usual practice appears to have been to build the hull, get it afloat, and then sail it round to Portsmouth Dockyard for rigging and fitting-out. Pelorus was the penultimate sailing warship to be built in Chichester Harbour, the last one, HMS Curacoa, being launched in September 1809. A later shipyard at Itchenor was used for building landing craft in World War 2, and the remains of a few of these lie not far from the 18th-century shipyard site.
There's little now to see, unfortunately, but the timberwork used for slipways was very substantial, and some of it may survive under the mud. I've also attached a copy of a 1778 map (Itchenor is towards the top right, called 'West Itchenor', with a long street heading north to the channel), and my rather crude redrawing of a 1786 chart, the only source to show the shipyard in any detail.
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