A rescue helicopter and a lifeboat were called out late on Friday night to a fire aboard a Belgian trawler with six crew 30 miles off the Essex coast.
A winchman from the helicopter, based at Wattisham airfield in Suffolk, went onto the vessel to deal with the fire but the fishermen had put it out.
The blaze was in the boat's wheelhouse and Kent fire service was on stand-by in case they were also needed.
A second boat helped tow the vessel called Atlantis to Zeebrugge port.
Spokesman Gordon Wise said: "A wheelhouse fire is not the best of things to have at all.
"The wheelhouse was in the vessel's accommodation area and the blaze could have affected the engine."
The six people aboard the vessel are all safe and well, he added.
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