To rank naval battles against one another, let's assign a pecking order among degrees of decisiveness. Here's What You Need to Remember: Why the rise of America didn't produce a cataclysmic naval war with the supreme sea power of the day is worth mulling over. But that, as they say, is a story for another day. Ranking battles by their importance has been a bloodsport among military historians as long as there have been military historians. Creasy's classic Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World (1851) set the standard for the genre. But what makes a battle decisive? And what makes one such test of arms more important than another?