Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(UK Und.) a criminal beggar who claims to have suffered shipwreck or piracy and requests alms to return home; or one who claims his goods are smuggled and thus sells them at an exorbitant rate.

1850		Working Man’s Friend I 26/2: One night it may be his lot to have as a bedfellow a smasher, another night a street-beggar, or a pickpocket, or a dry-land sailor, or a begging-letter imposter.
1852		Kendal Mercury 24 Jan. 6/1: Among the various ‘dodges‘ which have been practised with great success in this part of the country are ‘the escaped slave dodge,’ ‘the modest dodge,’ ‘[the] journeyman tradesman’s dodge,’ ‘the dry land sailor’s or mud-lark’s dodge,’ [etc.].
1856		Life in Boston & N.Y. (Boston, MA) 11 Oct. n.p.: I wonder if that dry land sailor, Isaiah W—r has paid [...] for those brass buttons he got on those pants of his?
1882		Manchester Courier 28 Jan. 10/5: There was an inevitable [...] dry-land sailor learning the latest sensational shipwreck ditty .
1889		Clarkson & Richardson Police! 237: These are the ‘dry-land Jacks;’ but in the Midlands the most frequent appeals to sympathy are by persons who really are [...] sufferers from pit explosions and mill accidents.
1895		J. Caminada Twenty-Five Years of Detective Life I 13: ‘Dry land sailors’ [...] were to be seen daily parading Shudehill [...] For many years these land sharks drove a thriving trade, but the day for dry land sailors and ‘smuggled’ goods has long since passed away.
1949		Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn) 76: dry land sailor An old tramp who does not work.