Definition of "shoreward"

When he felt him grasp his tail, Buck headed for the bank, swimming with all his splendid strength. But the progress shoreward was slow; the progress down-stream amazingly rapid.

1903 July, Jack London, “For the Love of a Man”, in The Call of the Wild, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., pages 175–176

The shoreward arms of the north and south cantilevers were built into masonry abutments.

1950 March, H. A. Vallance, “On Foot Across the Forth Bridge”, in Railway Magazine, page 148

If their enemies were really on the watch, if they had beleaguered the shoreward end of the pier, he and Lord Foxham were taken in a posture of poor defence […]

1883 June 30 – October 20, Robert Louis Stevenson, chapter V, in The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses, London, Paris: Cassell & Company, […], published 1888

Felixstowe's pier was cut short during the Second World War as an anti-invasion measure. Although its pierhead was subsequently demolished in the 1950s, a new £3 million shoreward building opened in August 2017.

2020 July 29, Dr Joseph Brennan, “Railways that reach out over the waves”, in Rail, page 49, photo caption

"Courage!" he said, and pointed toward the land, / "This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon."

1832 December (indicated as 1833), Alfred Tennyson, “The Lotos-Eaters”, in Poems, London: Edward Moxon, […], stanza I, page 108

[…] when they sawe our boates comming to the shoreward, they began to runne away, with a great clamour and outcrie […]

1582, chapter 2, in Nicholas Lichefield, transl., The First Booke of the Historie of the Discoverie and Conquest of the East Indias […] set foorth in the Portingale language by Hernan Lopes de Castaneda‎, London: Thomas East