By April 28, Banks and Porter had reassembled their forces at Alexandria. Now the low water dilemma, which had teased and threatened the fleet throughout the campaign, became a crisis. The water in the Red had dropped so low that portions of the rocky rapids were exposed, and at some points, the water was only 3 feet deep. Even the lightest gunboats needed at least 7 feet of water to pass. Ten of Porter’s gunboats were trapped above the rapids. Unless some means were found to get them below the rapids, they would have to be destroyed like the _Eastport_, otherwise they would be lost to the rebels. While many officers, including the expedition’s formally trained engineers, were preparing for the disastrous loss of the backbone of Porter’s fleet, Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Bailey was proposing the solution—a dam. JOSEPH BAILEY AND HIS DAM Military engineer Joseph Bailey’s presence with the Red River expedition was, in a sense, one of those coincidences of history that sometimes result in turning the course of events. His knowledge of engineering was not acquired through formal study at West Point. Instead, he had learned practical engineering on the Wisconsin frontier, where damming was a skill perfected by lumbermen to float logs to their sawmills. Born in Ashtabula County, Ohio on May 6, 1827, Bailey grew up in Illinois. In 1850 he moved to Wisconsin, where for the next 20 years he was involved in the construction of dams, mills, and bridges. At the beginning of the war, Bailey formed a company of lumbermen and became a captain. Soon, though, his construction genius was recognized and he was supervising various engineering projects for the North, including construction at Fort Dix in Washington D.C. and the attempts to build canals during the Vicksburg campaign. In 1863 Bailey won distinction at the battle of Port Hudson. There, despite the scoffs of formally trained military engineers, he constructed a gun emplacement in full sight of rebel fortifications and proceeded to silence the Confederate guns. He also built a dam during the siege to refloat two grounded steamboats. All this had been accomplished while he was, officially, an officer in the Wisconsin 4th Cavalry. Recognizing Bailey’s talent, General Banks, without authority, promoted him to colonel. But this promotion was the right of the Governor of Wisconsin, and it was retracted. Instead, Bailey was made a Lieutenant Colonel of Volunteers. Bailey was infuriated at this seeming injustice, and fortunately for Porter’s stranded fleet, he had applied for and received a staff position as engineer for Major General William B. Franklin, one of Banks’s officers.