Can you tell me anything more about the "recuperating" George P. did with his brother in Australia? We have a family story (the Australian descendants of MFA Canning do, that is) saying that MFA was visited by a brother who was wounded and who returned to England and died. They do not have more detail than that, and I'm sure would be fascinated to hear anything, however slight, that would flesh out the picture.
Fascinatingly (to me, at any rate) is that a recently-found memoir of Gustave Pierrot, the son of the sister of George P, Louise Canning Pierrot, says that he remembers his uncle Botrinne quite well (George Botrinne Canning was the name he used in France; the P was perhaps a misread of a B, or a deliberate dodge). He says that George was wounded and came to stay with the family when they were living in Nanterre, to convalesce. He stayed with them several weeks/months (I don't have it here, don't recall the amount of time), and died in Nanterre, the nephew says.
Now this of course is quite contrary to the ship's logs, which say that he died at sea and was buried there. But the remarkable part is that, long before I located Gustave's revelation of a death in Nanterre, another author/researcher who is very interested in this story told me that he thought George P's funeral was staged, that he did not actually die on ship but was privately put ashore to die with his family in France. He was asking my opinion or further information on this theory. I told him at the time that I thought not. But apparently that was actually what happened. There may be a grave for George P. Canning in Nanterre, France. (But, even if we found that, it still would not answer the question of how he got shot. Do you have any info on that mystery??)
I've recently become an avid reader of Louis L'Amour, the American western writer and researcher of travelling men everywhere. Lamour had an insatiable curiosity for details of people's lives, and especially for earliest American history and European roots of it. Well, Lamour named his only son Beau. And throughout many of his novels that deal with earliest American history, he presents characters who have "Raf" and "Bo" as the phonetic roots of their names, almost always paired in the same novel. One character, whose name is dramatically showcased in the novel, is even named "Rafe Bogardus."
Lamour collected libraries, and often said that his favorite libraries were those belonging to ships' captains, that they were the very best distilled collections (owing to minimum space on board ships) of the most remarkable and hard-to-find writings in the world. I think he may somehow have known of Rafton and Botrinne (born Baltriune) Canning, and if that's the case, then there was something very remarkable, and perhaps very dastardly, about the two men's lives and actions. I'd give anything to be able to peruse Lamour's library and learn more on this. (Rafton was my direct ancestor. Like George P. Canning, and MFA Canning, Rafton's family history was a completely closed topic --- he and the whole family never mentioned anything, not one clue, as to family identity or activities. This secrecy is what piqued my curiosity along with one of MFA's descendant's curiosity, and thus we found each other online, both looking to find out what all the secrecy was about!)