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Wild Shape says "When you transform into a form granted by a spell, you gain all the effects of the form you chose from a version of the spell heightened to wild shape's level."

Your understanding is not correct.

Wild Shape's Heightened level is 2, which is lower than the heightened effects of Animal Form, so based on this I am correct in terms of results, even if I am not right in how we get to that answer, which is all I care about. Thanks!

The Druid focus spell is automatically heightened to allow the Druid to select the animal forms listed in the Animal Form spell.

Per RAW:

Heightened (2nd) You can also wild shape into the forms listed in animal form.

It appears to me that this only gives you the base forms:

Ape Speed 25 feet, climb Speed 20 feet; Melee Single Action fist, Damage 2d6 bludgeoning.

Bear Speed 30 feet; Melee Single Action jaws, Damage 2d8 piercing; Melee Single Action claw (agile), Damage 1d8 slashing.
Bull Speed 30 feet; Melee Single Action horn , Damage 2d8 piercing.
Canine Speed 40 feet; Melee Single Action jaws, Damage 2d8 piercing.
Cat Speed 40 feet; Melee Single Action jaws, Damage 2d6 piercing; Melee Single Action claw (agile), Damage 1d10 slashing.
Deer Speed 50 feet; Melee Single Action antler , Damage 2d6 piercing.
Frog Speed 25 feet, swim Speed 25 feet; Melee Single Action jaws, Damage 2d6 bludgeoning; Melee Single Action tongue (reach 15 feet), Damage 2d4 bludgeoning.
Shark swim Speed 35 feet; Melee Single Action jaws, Damage 2d8 piercing; breathe underwater but not in air.
Snake Speed 20 feet, climb Speed 20 feet, swim Speed 20 feet; Melee Single Action fangs , Damage 2d4 piercing plus 1d6 poison.

RAW does not explicitly say that you also get the heightened effects of Animal Form:

Heightened (3rd) You instead gain 10 temporary HP, AC = 17 + your level, attack modifier +14, damage bonus +5, and Athletics +14.

Heightened (4th) Your battle form is Large and your attacks have 10-foot reach. You must have enough space to expand into or the spell is lost. You instead gain 15 temporary HP, AC = 18 + your level, attack modifier +16, damage bonus +9, and Athletics +16.
Heightened (5th) Your battle form is Huge and your attacks have 15-foot reach. You must have enough space to expand into or the spell is lost. You instead gain 20 temporary HP, AC = 18 + your level, attack modifier +18, damage bonus +7 and double the number of damage dice, and Athletics +20.

As GM, I feel that RAI matches RAW in this case; the heightened aspects of Animal Form are not given by the Wild Shape spell.

Can anyone please advise if my understanding is correct?

My party has had a few rough encounters. Luckily, replacements are readily avaiable, it's simply a matter of a crewmember stepping up and joining the officers circle. So it's not as such a problem to introduce replacement characters.

But since the latest encounter in Mancatcher Cove, I have now unfortunately killed off everyone who ever served under Captain Harrigan. As he is cast as a recurring villain, this means I now have a main foe whom my PCs has no relation to, and he has none to them.

Does anybody have any ideas how to solve this? I'm at the end of AP 2.

He will be back in the Regatta in the 3rd book. Simply have him recognize the ship, or decide to hate the PC's for beating him at the Regetta.

In my campaign, the PC's wasted no time in taking over the ship - using the tools best suited to pirates on the high seas.

Late one night, they decided to kill Plugg in his sleep. They found the trap door to the captain's quarters on the Man's Promise. No issue here, I thought, it's a DC 30 Disable device. They take 20 and the max they can get is 27. "Hey can I assist?". Sure I think, I can imagaine it possible for one other PC to try to assist, but that only gets them to a 29.

Then Guidance happens.

Once coup de grace later, and Plugg is dead.

The great part: the party was nearly TKP'd by jumping into water that is completely jet black to kill the devilfish. I did all I could to keep them alive, including the devilfish switching targets each time he was hit. that said, not seeing your target combined with being grappled while underwater - only one PC survived.

The surviving member of the party became the new captain... and was promptly killed in a mutiny by the other PC's when he decided to disallow undead to be the ship's crew when the other PC's all thought it a good idea.

Long story short: my team worked well to find a unique solution to plug, then killed themselves off so that now Barnabus has no one to hate... This will be interesting.

I'm trying to figure out what an 'equal share' means in terms of the Brine Banshee? That's what it says that Hannelius Fitch wants - does that mean he wants points of plunder? Some of the magic items? Value split as though he were a party member, but not counting the payout to a crew?

Did I miss this somewhere in the AP, or does someone have an actual number of what should essentially be removed from the loot to give to him?

I can tell you what my group's definition of an equal share is: it involves Davy Jones' locker. I fear for Mr Fitch.

In seriousness, "an equal share" is what the PC's decide it is. They are pirates after all, and most likely evil in alignment.