The Elli began her life as a ship that no country wanted. Originally ordered by the Chinese government as the Fei Hong, she was one of three cruisers of the Chao Ho class; the Nationalist revolution of 1912–13 cancelled the purchase before she was completed. New York Shipbuilding in the United States finished her in 1914 and sold her to Greece, which was expanding its navy following the Balkan Wars.

She was named for the Naval Battle of Elli — an 1912 Greek naval victory in the First Balkan War. Over the following decades she accumulated history: convoy duty in the Aegean during World War I, a modernisation in France in 1925–27 that fitted her with anti-aircraft armament and equipment to lay sea mines, and service during the Asia Minor Expedition. In September 1922, a young sub-lieutenant named Paul — the future King Paul of Greece — stood on her deck and watched the evacuation of Smyrna. What he witnessed there would remain with him for the rest of his life.

The Italian submarine Delfino departed the naval base at Partheni on Leros on the night of 14 August 1940. Her orders were to attack ships at Tinos, Syros, and then block the Corinth Canal. The commander, Lieutenant Giuseppe Aicardi, brought her into the harbour of Tinos before dawn.

When the torpedoes came, the Elli's crew had no warning. One of the three struck her beneath the single operating boiler. She caught fire. She sank. Nine petty officers and sailors were killed; twenty-four more were wounded. The same submarine attempted to torpedo two passenger ships also anchored in the port — MV Elsi and MV Esperos — but those attacks failed, damaging only a section of the wharf. Pilgrims on the dock watched the warship go down.

Fragments of the torpedoes were recovered from the seabed. They were identified as Italian in manufacture. The Greek government, attempting to avoid a confrontation with Mussolini's Italy, announced publicly that the nationality of the attacking submarine was unknown.

The Greek people were not persuaded. They had seen the torpedoes. They knew what had happened and who had done it. The government's careful neutrality did not survive the year: the Greco-Italian War began on 28 October 1940 — two and a half months after the sinking — when Italy issued an ultimatum demanding the right to occupy Greek territory. Greece refused. The war Greece had tried to avoid arrived anyway.

After the war, Italy provided compensation in the form of a cruiser transferred to the Royal Hellenic Navy. The ship was commissioned in June 1950 under the name Elli — the name the first ship had carried, now given to a successor. She served until 1973. Since 1982, a Standard-class frigate, the lead ship of its class, has continued the name in the Greek Navy.

In Tinos harbour, a monument marks the site of the sinking. Every year on 15 August — the Feast of the Dormition, the day the Elli went down — the Greek Navy holds a memorial ceremony. The icon is carried in procession down to the harbour; warships are present; the sailors who died are named. The coincidence of dates — the holiest feast of the Greek summer, the unprovoked attack on a neutral ship, the pilgrims who witnessed it — has never been forgotten. It has simply become part of what August 15 means in Tinos.