[Note 542.5]

In 1836, Charles Green left Vauxhall Gardens, London in a balloon named The Royal Vauxhall. He descended the next day, at at Weilburg in Nassau, (in what is now Germany) having travelled altogether about 500 miles in eighteen hours - a record that stood until 1907. [Oxford Dictionary of National Biography]. Germany did not exist as a nation at that time hence the song's reference to Holland. The balloon was renamed The Great Nassau again ascended from Vauxhall Gardens on 24 July 1837,