The waters of the Blackstone River rush through the Pratt Dam in Cumberland where William S. King IV died.

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The Providence Journal / Bob Breidenbach

CUMBERLAND — It was another fine fall day along the swift-running Blackstone River and 17-year-old William S. King IV was canoeing again with his father.

The elder King always felt lucky that his son’s idea of a good time was just like his — and it didn’t involve drinking or drugs.

The two relished the real things that New England has to offer on the weekend: Mountain snowboard trails laden with moguls. Rock concerts in Boston. Cruising the Blackstone on a crisp morning, just a few hours before the Patriots kickoff.

They liked challenges, too, which is why the young man and his father decided to “shoot the tubes” — canoe through the stone archways at the Pratt Dam.

The adventure ended disastrously Sunday when their canoe overturned on the north side of the dam. The elder King shot through one of the archways, but his son became entangled with the canoe and debris inside an adjacent tube and didn’t make it.

“I loved that boy with all my heart,” his father, William S. King III, said yesterday. “I know he had a smile on his face the last time I saw him.”

Twenty-four hours later, the young man’s father wanted to pay tribute to his son, a Cumberland High School graduate and a student at the Community College of Rhode Island.

“He was a good kid who despised drugs and alcohol,” King said. “He loved life.”

THE TEEN’S FATHER and others in Rhode Island’s paddling community spoke of the dangers of the tubes at Pratt Dam.

“There’s no room for error,” said King.

He and his son launched their canoe at Albion Falls around 10 Sunday morning.

They planned to paddle downstream, more than just a few miles, to a landing near Cumberland Town Hall and Heritage Park, which is where they had parked a second vehicle.

The river was running strong, after recent rain, but it wasn’t close to high water.

In its online Blackstone River and Canal Guide, the National Park Service cautions that paddling through the arches at Pratt Dam is not recommended for anyone. Instead, it says, paddlers should portage around the area. An online map marks the site with "!CAUTION!"

However, canoeing through the arches isn’t banned. People do it. The Kings had done it in June.

The problem is that it’s impossible to know what is inside the tube. A branch, for example, can block the passageway, creating a deadly trap.

“You don’t know,” said Joseph M. Sherlock, who heads up a safety and education subcommittee for the Rhode Island Canoe/Kayak Association.

Sherlock has friends who shoot the tubes. He admits he’s felt plenty of temptation to do it himself.

Doing the safer thing, he acknowledged — landing upstream of the dam, hauling the canoe or kayak out and putting in below the dam — is a lot of work.

Sherlock said he’s always opted for the detour, or portage, and he would have done the same thing yesterday. He checked out the situation from the bike path directly above the arches.

“From what I saw, those tubes are running hard,” he said.

“The tubes are dangerous,” he added. “They really probably shouldn’t be canoed.”

Jan Reitsma, executive director of the John H. Chafee Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor, said the park service does not own heritage areas so it cannot issue bans the way it sometimes does in national parks.

Sherlock said some dams on the river are marked with buoys to alert canoeists or kayakers. The Pratt Dam is not, they said.

King said he doesn’t think he and his son would have heeded a warning based on what they knew when they approached the dam on Sunday.

THEY HAD DONE it before. The conditions seemed safe.

He recalls the expert trails they had encountered snowboarding in the mountains — the ones marked with double black diamonds.

“When we see a black diamond trail, we take it,” he said. “We don’t go flying down it, but we take it. It’s the adventure.”

On Sunday, as the dam approached, the current turned the canoe, he said. The boat slammed into the stone dam structure broadside.

The river rushed against it and turned it over, he said. He was immediately swept through one of the five archways.

The canoe and his son were pulled into another passage that was cluttered with branches.

The teen was tethered to the craft by a 4-foot mooring line that had become tangled around his ankle.

The canoe torpedoed into the debris and the current pushed it down far enough to pull the young man under the surface.

King swam to shore and raced back to the dam. He said he did everything he could. Rescuers, including local firefighters, gave it their best effort, too, he said.

The rescue crews went to the site at 12:21 p.m.

Several boats were put into the river, but their outboard engines didn’t have enough power to overcome the current, according to Valley Falls Fire Chief Brian Jackvony.

Rescuers also tried to reach the young man by dangling from the end of a fire ladder, he said.

Eventually, a crane was brought in to drop a steel plate over one end of the archway and stanch the flow of water. The young man’s body was recovered late in the afternoon, Jackvony said.

“It’s a very unfortunate, tragic situation,” he said. “If that rope wasn’t entangled around him, I’m sure he would have come out of here.”

—With staff reports from Michael P. McKinney and Maria Armental

mreynold@projo.com