Outlander 3.8: Pirates!

Well, with Black Sails sailed off the air earlier thus year, Outlander couldn't have come up a pirate thread at a better time - that is, if you like pirate stories (I do) and if that ship at the end of episode 3.8 whose men captured young Ian are pirates. 

I think they are.  But who can be sure (since I haven't read the novels, I'm only sure of what I've seen on screen).  I'm indeed sure that tonight's episode was excellent, in the new series that's come back to us with Claire's return to Scotland and the past.  Her reunion with Jamie, and all its difficulties, have been handled with intelligence and style.

As always, I have questions (and maybe these were answered already in the novels).  But -

1. Why didn't Jamie go up to the stones, rather than swim to the island, when he was out of prison, any time during the 20 years?  Is it possible that stones won't work for Jamie?  But, if so, how would he know that?  Or, did he try to travel to the future via the stones, but got nowhere?

2. Less cosmic: how was young Ian supposed to get the coins and jewels back to Jamie and Claire without a boat?  It's already been established that the swim is rough, even treacherous, so what was the plan?  (And my wife wonders why young Ian couldn't take a boat in the first place?)

But I'm loving Outlander, anyway, and the prospect of Jamie and Claire going to the same part of the world as James Bond, played by Sean Connery, another Scot, would fictionally do in our own century - come to think of it, around the same time Claire was in Boston - is appealing indeed.  How do you say shiver me timbers in Scottish?

See also Outlander Season 3 Debut: A Tale of Two Times and Places ...Outlander 3.2: Whole Lot of Loving, But ... Outlander 3.3: Free and Sad ... Outlander 3.4: Love Me Tender and Dylan ... Outlander 3.5: The 1960s and the Past ... Outlander 3.6: Reunion ... Outlander 3.7: The Other Wife

And see also Outlander 2.1: Split Hour ... Outlander 2.2: The King and the Forest ... Outlander 2.3: Mother and Dr. Dog ... Outlander 2.5: The Unappreciated Paradox ... Outlander 2.6: The Duel and the Offspring ...Outlander 2.7: Further into the Future ... Outlander 2.8: The Conversation ... Outlander 2.9: Flashbacks of the Future ... Outlander 2.10: One True Prediction and Counting ... Outlander 2.11: London Not Falling ... Outlander 2.12: Stubborn Fate and Scotland On and Off Screen ... Outlander Season 2 Finale: Decades

And see also Outlander 1.1-3: The Hope of Time Travel ... Outlander 1.6:  Outstanding ... Outlander 1.7: Tender Intertemporal Polygamy ...Outlander 1.8: The Other Side ... Outlander 1.9: Spanking Good ... Outlander 1.10: A Glimmer of Paradox ... Outlander 1.11: Vaccination and Time Travel ... Outlander 1.12: Black Jack's Progeny ...Outlander 1.13: Mother's Day ... Outlander 1.14: All That Jazz ... Outlander Season 1 Finale: Let's Change History

 

It all started in the hot summer of 1960, when Marilyn Monroe walked off the set of The Misfits and began to hear a haunting song in her head, "Goodbye Norma Jean" ...