FRYEBURG — A 7-year-old boy was rescued from a river after clinging to the body of his mother who drowned trying to save the child.

A canoeist who pulled Eric Chase from the Saco River said he and a friend found the boy screaming and barely afloat. When they got to him they realized he was clinging onto the body of Ruth Chase, whose husband, William, also drowned trying to save their son.

“She was blue and cold. I knew the situation didn’t look very good,” Travis Kania, the canoeist, told WCSH-TV.

The mother’s body was recovered, but attempts to resuscitate the 38-year-old woman failed, Maine Warden Service spokesman Paul Reynolds said Wednesday. Divers located the body of William Chase, 46, after Tuesday’s accident.

Reynolds said the family, from Kingston, N.H., had rented a canoe and had been camping along the southern Maine river, a popular attraction for canoeists from Maine and neighboring states. The three had stopped for lunch along a sand bar when their son stepped from a shallow area into deep water.

While fully clothed, the boy’s father ran into the river after the child, but quickly disappeared under the water. His wife, who was also clothed, followed her husband into the water in an attempt to save Eric.

The child has two older siblings but they were not on the trip, said Reynolds.

The drownings were among four in Maine on Tuesday.

The body of an 18-year-old Sanford man was recovered after he drowned at the Moussam Lake Dam on Babbling Brook Road in Shapleigh. Daniel Granger went under the water about 25 feet from shore in an area where swimming is not authorized.

Also Tuesday, a Scarborough man was found face down in Flagstaff Lake in the town of Eustis. Wardens said they spotted a fishing boat doing circles on the lake and found Robert Abbott, 58, in the water.