[1] By the early 1960s, workshops and other facilities were under construction at Massawa to give it complete naval base capabilities.

Centers to provide enlisted men with training in technical specialities were established at Aseb, Asmara, and Massawa.

Retired British Royal Navy officers also served as trainers and advisers during Haile Selassie's reign.

[2] The Ethiopian ship was named after Zerai Deres,[3][4] famous national patriot considered a folk hero.

In April 1977, the navy lost the Cape-class patrol boat P-11, with reports blaming the loss both on a storm and on an attack by the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) during the First Battle of Massawa.

The Eritrean rebellion spread to the Dahlak Islands, where the EPLF damaged the Petya II-class frigate F-1616 beyond repair.

By the spring of 1991, the navy's ships had begun to use ports in Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen because of the danger of returning to their home bases.

In late May 1991, the EPLF captured Asmara and surrounded Assab, where fire from its ground forces sank seven Ethiopian Navy ships in port.

Nonetheless, directed by its headquarters in Addis Ababa, it continued occasional patrols in the Red Sea from ports in Yemen.

Eritrea expressed interest in 16 of them, but finally limited itself to purchasing only four of them—an Osa-II class missile boat and three Swiftships Shipbuilders patrol craft—in order to avoid exacerbating an international crisis with Yemen.

Its only remnant was the patrol boat GB-21; moved inland to Lake Tana and manned by Ethiopian Army personnel, she survived as of 2009 as Ethiopia's only military watercraft.

[2] In June 2018, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed called for the eventual reconstitution of the Ethiopian Navy as part of a wider program of security sector reforms, saying that "we should build our naval force capacity in the future".

[5] In March 2019, Abiy Ahmed signed defense accords with France's Emmanuel Macron, including on support in establishing a naval component.