For well over 100 years, the 19th-century structures of the Herreshoff Manufacturing Company (now the Herreshoff Marine Museum) have dominated Burnside Street in Bristol. Happily, that’s still the case, after a Monday night scare that saw a fire break out at 28 Burnside St. a little after 5 p.m., followed by a robust response from Bristol’s volunteer fire department.

The south side of Burnside is dominated by a row of structures that the museum largely uses for restoration projects and boatbuilding classes — and it was during one such class that a small blaze broke out on Monday.

“It was during a boatbuilding class, while a piece of oak was being steamed to be bent, and a fire began in the electrical outlet,” said Bill Lynn, the Herreshoff Marine Museum’s executive director.

“The sprinkler system did what it needed to do,” said Mr. Lynn, who noted that while there was some damage to a wall, a drafting table, and some items, nothing of major historical significance was damaged.

The fire should have no real impact on museum activities as, aside from the classes, the only other project in the space was a volunteer-driven restoration of a steam launch, which has been largely mothballed since the beginning of the pandemic.

One significant break: the walls in that space are basically down to the studs, so there were no hidden spaces or vertical channels to allow embers to linger or fire to travel between floors.

“The sprinklers did their job and the Bristol firefighters responded immediately,” said Mr. Lynn. “They were fantastic.”

“We definitely got lucky.”