English maritime interests have included Portugal, Spain, and the Straits of Gibraltar from before the time of Henry VIII. The wars against the Moors, the Crusades, and trade in wine and Mediterranean exotic produce was a driving force in England’s development of both commercial and naval fleets. It is interesting, but not surprising, to discover that seafarers in England included people from that region.
Definitely. Maritime people really got around. The post-Roman British Isles enjoyed the fruits of Byzantine trade, even though the local population shifts were continual. The Vikings wound up in pockets around Europe, including Sicily and southern Italy, thanks in part to their mercenary service for the Byzantine Empire, and of course their having carved out fiefs for themselves throughout the British Isles, and France. Scandinavian DNA generally shows up as a surprise finding when people interested in their English genealogy get theirs done, and it's not at all rare to find it north of 30%, even though they'd previously had no paperwork to indicate any such thing. During the Middle Ages, Vikings were settled in the Shetlands and the Orkneys when the Scots finally visited those places. The British Empire ruled a decent fraction of the world's population, and even during the later Commonwealth there was a lot of freedom of movement. Still is.