Preventing ERC automated channel disconnects

[Bob Proulx]

Seeing the IRC questions has prompted me to ask about something that
gets in the way of my using ERC.  I use an irc bouncer proxy to
maintain a persistent connection.  With most irc clients this works
great.  But with Emacs erc when I disconnect erc then disconnects from
all of the channels completely defeating the purpose of using the irc
bouncer.

I have looked several times but haven't found where this disconnection
is done.  Does anyone know how to tell erc not to do this?

[My workaround when I am using erc is to pull the network connection
so that erc can't transmit the disconnect commands and then to exit
erc.  Then I can reconnect to the network.  Harsh.  But effective!]

Bob