Third-rank Prince Zaixun and Admiral Sa Zhenbing were sent on a whirlwind fact-finding tour of the West, starting in Europe in October 1909 (where Admiral Sa was awarded the Order of St Michael and St George) and continuing to the United States and Japan in 1910.

The commission also suggested that the various Chinese navies be unified and divided into three separate fleets, Southern, Central and Northern.

Part of the ambitious modernization program was the commissioning of new state-of-the-art ships for the Navy, battleships, cruisers, torpedo boats and submarines.

[1] The lead ship of the class was Chao Ho which was laid down in the UK at the Armstrong Whitworth naval yard in Elswick on 7 November 1910 and commissioned a year later.

The fledgling Chinese republic was uninterested in being saddled with the Manchu Qing dynasty's debts and dealings, so on 14 May 1914, Fēi Hóng, which had not yet been paid for or delivered, was sold to the Kingdom of Greece and renamed Elli (Greek: Κ/Δ Έλλη) after the decisive Battle of Elli of 1912, by the New York Shipbuilding Company.