1. Naut. An approach to or sighting of land, esp. for the first time on a sea-voyage. To make a good (or bad) landfall: to meet with land in accordance with (or contrary to) one’s reckoning.
1627. Capt. Smith, Seaman’s Gram., ix. 43. A good Land fall is when we fall iust with our reckoning, if otherwise a bad Land fall.
1670. Narborough, in Acc. Sev. Late Voy., I. (1711), 79. The best Land-fall in my Opinion, is to make the face of Cape Desseada for to come out of the South Sea to go into the Streight of Magellan.
1706. [E. Ward], Wooden World (1708), 89. If his Reckoning in a long Voyage, jump with his Land-fall, he’s as exalted [etc.].
1850. Scoresby, Cheever’s Whaleman’s Adv., xviii. (1859), 281. It is not until a captain has made three or four good landfalls … just according to his calculations that the living by faith in … the results upon his slate begin[s] to come easy.
1891. Winsor, Columbus, ix. 214. Las Casas reports the journal of Columbus unabridged for a period after the landfall.
b. concr. The first land ‘made’ on a sea-voyage.
1883. T. W. Higginson, in Harper’s Mag., Jan., 218/2. His ‘Prima Vista,’ or point first seen—what sailors call landfall—was … Cape Breton.
1884. Sir T. Brassey, in 19th Cent., May, 833. The Bahamas will be for ever memorable as the landfall of Columbus.
2. ‘A sudden translation of property in land by the death of a rich man’ (J.).
1876. Whitby Gloss., s.v., ‘They’ve got a bonny land-fall,’ a large amount of property bequeathed.
3. A landslip. (Ogilvie, 1882.)
