The origin is British. The late quotation anthologist James B. Simpson sent me an early usage in 1997 from Tony Banks, Britain's minister of sport at the time, ''I was completely gobsmacked,'' which I dutifully posted in this space, little realizing the expression had such a future. The Oxford Dictionary of New Words reports usages from the mid-80's, defining it as ''astounded, flabbergasted; speechless or incoherent with amazement; overawed.''
A gob has to do with the mouth. It can mean ''a mass,'' as in ''gobs of money,'' from the Old French gobe, ''mouthful.'' The Gaelic gob is ''mouth, beak.'' One sense of the verb gobble, from the same French root, is ''to eat fast and greedily.'' And when a politician says a mouthful with some degree of articulation, he is said to have the gift of gab.
Why is a sailor called a gob, which has the dialect sense of ''to spit''? Because in British nautical slang of the 19th century, coast guardsmen used to tell yarns, chew tobacco and spit out the juice. The common denominator of all this gobbledygook is the mouth.
Salt, Swab, Tar, or Jack-tar are some old slang words for sailor. Mariner is standard but a little old-fashioned. US Navy sailors were called gobs in WWII.
Crew
It is wrapped up in gobs and gobs of it.
Sailors on any type of vessel are called a crew of sailors.
A collection of sailors is called a crew of sailors.
Gobs of Trouble - 1935 was released on: USA: 12 July 1935
The Galloping Gobs - 1927 was released on: USA: 27 February 1927
Gobs of Fun - 1933 was released on: USA: 21 October 1933
Gobs of Fun - 1949 was released on: USA: 28 July 1949
The rhyme scheme for "Great Glorious Gobs" is AABBCC.
This is called mutiny and the sailors are mutineers.
sailors