[dm-devel] How to reattach a disconnected device with active device-mapper mappings on top

[Fedja Beader]

I have a hard disk connected to my laptop via an usb-sata bridge that somehow got disconnected. There is a stack of device-mapper mappings and a mounted filesystem on top of it that are currently failing all I/O. "dmsetup deps" reports 
"1 dependencies : (8, 16)". 
The same HDD is now reattached, but as /dev/sdc (8,32) and refuses to be attached as /dev/sdb, which is now a permanently vacant slot.

How do I force this hard disk to attach as (8,16) so the whole device-mapper stack and the filesystem on top of it can resume working?

​Thank you,
Fedja​