Beautiful Belle Isle, in the James River at Richmond, became a Confederate prison after the First Battle of Bull Run, confining Union noncommissioned officers and enlisted men. No barracks were erected; Belle Isle and the Union prison at Point Lookout, MD, were the only major Civil War prisons that were made up of clusters of tents. Although Belle Isle Prison was intended to hold only 3,000 men, with tents provided t house that many, its population swelled to double that number and more. The island's location in the rapids of the James River made escape very perilous. Many of the men who tried it drowned before reaching safety.