@SilentbutnotreallyDeadly said in The Sinking of MS Hans Hedtoft - January 30th, 1959:
Salted fish...?
I was thinking along those lines, this was in the break bulk cargo days, years before containerization, so basically anything could be being sent in barrels, and they'd presumably be sending fish back to Europe on the eastbound legs, while sending other food and all sorts of consumer goods back to Greenland on the westbound.