HS ELLI (F-450) was built in the Netherlands by Royal Schelde. Her class is called “S-Frigate”, which is an abbreviation of the term STANDARD.  She is the first frigate to be acquired by the Greek Navy and the contract for the sale of the ship was signed in Athens in 1980. The Greek flag was raised on the ship on 10 October 1981 in Vlissignen, the Netherlands. Construction began in 1978 and was completed in July 1979, and she is the fifth ship of the STANDARD series ordered by the Dutch Navy.

The name ELLI is a memorial to the Battle of Elli on 3/16 December 1912. It was the first of the two major naval battles between the Greek Navy and the Ottoman Fleet during the First Balkan War. The naval battle of ELLI took place near the approaches of the Straits of Dardanelles (otherwise known as Ellispont). The battle ended with the victory of the Greek fleet and the confinement of the Ottoman fleet within the straits. HS ELLI is the third consecutive ship of the Navy to bear this name. The first ship with the name ELLI was the former Chinese Fei-Hung, which was built in the year 1912 in the USA and purchased by the Greek Government later that year. It took part in the First World War and the Asia Minor campaign. She was sunk on 15 August 1940 by the Italian submarine “DOLFINO”, in peacetime, while anchored off the port of Tinos where she had sailed for the celebration of the Assumption of Virgin Mary. The second ELLI, formerly the Italian Eugenio di Savoia, was delivered to Greece in July 1950 to replace the torpedoed ELLI. In 1959 she was refitted in Souda Bay where she was used as the headquarters of the Admiral Chief of the Cretan Sea (ACCS). The name ELLI was given to the first frigate of the Greek Navy in memory of the cruiser ELLI, which was torpedoed on 15 August 1940 in the port of Tinos.