tl;dr writing a short story for my partner’s birthday, but I need some help with 17th century British history.

I'm writing my partner a short story for her birthday. We tend to exchange creative gifts for special events - such as a playlist, poem, or meme album, and for her birthday this year, I'm writing a short story for her. A few nights ago, I was making up a story for her to go to bed to, and I want to expand on it.

Currently, the plot has two main characters. I gave the protagonist the name Andrew Francis Hugh. Andrew was named after a redditor who drove himself to suicide, because he could not live with the idea that under multiverse theory there will always exist a version of himself suffering from immortality. I would like to name my second character after a character in history, but I forgot his name. This person was a British merchant who built his fortune from slavery. In the later years of his life, he changed his views on slavery and worked as an abolitionist (and possibly made some famous song). Does this person exist? I'll call him Francisco for the rest of this post.

Andrew's story starts with him wildly in love with his soon to be wife, Thomasin. They were a poor couple bewildered by the beauty of wild beasts, so they protected beasts from being hunted. The wife was killed by some beast during a raid by the British police, where she let them all free. Andrew was then taken to British courts where he was punished with labor in the new world.

The actual story started on water. On the boat ride to the new world, other people punished with labor came to understand that there was a war in the new world. In the mayhem, Andrew and Francisco escaped on a life boat. This was the first time that they interacted. As night came for the first time, Andrew becomes fascinated by some beautiful creature in the water. For 14 days**, Andrew becomes more and more enamored with this water beast. Francisco assumed that Andrew had become delusional because of starvation and dehydration, but he too had accepted death as his faith. On the night of the 14th day, Andrew exclaimed that he can not stand not being with her. Francisco reasons that she wants him here on the boat just in case they're rescued. However, "beauty is deafening", and Andrew dived towards her. His eyes were only for hers. She opened her month, and he entered willingly. The next morning Francisco was rescued in the morning by the boat with the successful prisoners.

**14 is the number of post that u/afh43 made about multiverse theory.

Would it make sense for the wife to be killed by a panther? I would like her to be killed by some big cat, but I'm not sure if it was at all possible for a panther to be in England in the 17th century. Does Andrew's name make sense for a young boy during that time? Does his wife's name make sense? Would Andrew's crime be punishable by labor? Would it make sense for the other prisoners on the boat to rebel? Did ships at that time have life boats? Would it make more sense if they were Spanish?

Edit: I felt like this story was familiar, and I found the same one. This isn't my story. It's a fanfic using someone else's plot. This story belongs to this person: https://www.reddit.com/r/shortscarystories/comments/8besmr/dont_trust_the_mermaids/