[3] With the independence of Brazil, the naval sector gradually restructured itself to cope with the growing demand for means of locomotion of cargo and passengers by river and sea.

The implementation of this plan and the establishment of lines to New York and, in 1910, to Portugal and then to Great Britain and Germany did not bring the economic profits and led to the complete takeover of the company by the state before World War I.

The landing of more than 400 prisoners of the Karlsruhe by a steamer of the Hamburg Süd in Belém in the fall of 1914 led to the indication to the Germans that further support of their naval war would not be tolerated.

On 22 May 1917, the old steamer Lapa (former Sparta, 1,366 GRT, 1872) of Lloyd Brasileiro, with a cargo of coffee bound for Marseilles, was stopped off Gibraltar by the German submarine SM U-47 and became the fourth Brazilian ship to be sunk.

The most serious accident was the capsizing of the Avare (former Sierra Salvada) on 16 January 1922, while undocking in the port of Hamburg, in which 39 men, including 26 Brazilian seamen, lost their lives.

During World War II, Lloyd Brasileiro again received a large number of ships seized by the Brazilian government, the majority of which were Italian and Danish.

[2] The German share was small, as a large number of ships attempted to reach home even after the outbreak of war, some of them only after the conquest of France.

Thus Lloyd Brasileiro received the modern 6,000 GRT Montevideo of Hamburg-Süd, whose sister ship Porto Alegre left Santos 14 days after the outbreak of war and was able to break through to Hamburg.

During World War II, 30 Brazilian merchant ships were sunk by German U-boats, 17 of which belonged to Lloyd Brasileiro.

After an economic high in the 1970s, Lloyd Brasileiro again fell into increasing financial distress due to poor freight rates in the early 1980s and heavy debt caused by the need to build new container ships in the second half of that decade.

[10] In the early 1990s, the company laid up a large part of its fleet and later ceased operations for good, despite promised rescue efforts by the government.