Glad to see someone joining me in the anti-Yalu campaign! 
Umm Coral Sea’s already gone wevets you might want to change your vote.
I’m voting for:
Black May - 2 votes. The turning point in the Battle of the Atlantic but more a case of the tide of attrition shifting against the Germans. Didn’t decide the war and the U-Boots remained a problem right up to the end.
Battle of Yamen - 2 votes. For the reasons outlined by Sailboat.
**Second Battle of Syracuse/Sicilian Expedition ** - 1 vote. A crushing victory for the SYracusans but just part of an ongoing stuff up.
Good to see this alive again!
I do have some thinking to do this time round, having knocked out two of my picks last time.
I’ll stick with Yamen, for reasons already discussed.
Jutland is an odd one - tactically indecisive (if spectacular), you can argue it was strategically decisive in two ways. Either because the near-trapping of the High Seas Fleet convinced the German Admiralty to give up offensive operations, or because the tactical successes convinced them not to give up on the battlefleet and go all-out for U-boats, which was the only way Germany was ever going to win the naval war. I’ll split the difference and say it was indecisive full stop; ultimately it left everyone in the position thay had been the previous month and the High Seas Fleet’s posture in 1917 was no more passive than it had been in 1915.
For the last pick, I’ll go with lisiate and nominate the Sicilian Expedition. The naval defeat trapped the Athenian army, but ultimately the campaign was lost on land, both in the initial failure to take the city and the final failure to break out.
So:
Yamen - 2
Jutland - 2
Second Syracuse/Sicilian Expedition -1
For the other picks mentioned:
Hansan - know nothing about it, so I’ll go with Sailboat’s estimation
Leyte Gulf - I’ve said my piece about this, but a knock-out victory in the biggest naval battle in history has to be worth something.
Black May - “the only thing that frightened me was the U-boat peril”
Yalu - head agrees that it’s probably not top-20 material; heart can’t get past this image - the war is such a perfect symbol for both the Western influence in Asia in the 19th century and the different responses and fates of China and Japan.
Quiberon Bay - I suspect it’s probably sunk, but I’ll keep on trying the defend it. Sailboat - the confusion over losses relates to the ships that “escaped” to the Vilaine river - by throwing their guns and gear overboard and many of them taking crippling hull damage in the process. I suspect in many ways throwing the guns overboard (or sneaking out of the bay under cover of darkness and foul weather) was more demoralising to the French navy than a guns-blazing defeat in the open sea would have been, and few of the ships were effectively used again.
Quiberon Bay was not just “another British victory over the French”. The naval warfare of the 1740’s and 1750’s had been characterised by indecision, indiscipline and wasted chances by politically-connected admirals, culminating in Byng’s failure off Minorca, for which he was shot. Quiberon Bay was the birth of the new aggressive mindset that would see the Royal Navy dominate the ocean for the next fifty years. (It’s interesting, too, that no-one but me has mentioned the Glorious First of June yet. On the Glorious First the British took 7 out of 26 French ships - a worse record than Quiberon Bay even on Sailboat’s maths - the surviving French ships were still able to fight, and the French could claim a strategic victory, as the convoy they were covering got through).
Oh, and Wargamer - Denmark Straight is long gone, so you might want to change your vote.
I will go with:
Jutland: 2
Yalu: 2
I just can’t go for Leyte. Yea, I know the writing was on the wall…but it was biggest naval battle in history! Maybe next time
Time for the one below it:
First of June - 1
I’m going to go with Leyte Gulf - 2. I just think the Battle of Midway was more important
Chesapeake --2. I’m glad this was nominated because a lot of Americans have never even heard of the sea battle, but Cornwallis had already pretty much been whipped on the land and the British were beginning to get tired of the war.
Yalu - 1. I’m going to have to do some research on the rest these, but I’ll help Wevet in his campaign. 
I’ve always felt that Jutland exposed Tirpitz’ “risk theory” for the gigantic bluff it had always been.
[QUOTE=Wikipedia]
Tirpitz developed a “risk theory” (an analysis which today would be considered part of game theory) whereby, if the German Navy reached a certain level of strength relative to the British Navy, the British would try to avoid confrontation with Germany (that is, maintain a fleet in being). If the two navies fought, the German Navy would inflict enough damage on the British that the latter ran a risk of losing their naval dominance. Because the British relied on their navy to maintain control over the British Empire, Tirpitz felt they would rather maintain naval supremacy in order to safeguard their empire, and let Germany become a world power, than lose the empire as the cost of keeping Germany less powerful. This theory sparked a naval arms race between Germany and Great Britain in the first decade of the 20th century.
[/QUOTE]
Bluffs can work, but when your opponent feels cornered, you run the risk of having the bluff called. Perhaps it could not have been foreseen in the pre-war years, but the emotional politics of WWI turned out to create a situation in which the British felt letting Germany’s navy control the seas meant national extinction, or at least the same thing as losing that empire, so “letting Germany become a world power while safeguarding the empire” wasn’t [perceived as] possible. Thus the British would accept the risk and sortie to shoot it out. And conversely, since the High Seas Fleet was too weak to dominate such a shootout, its only real purpose was to pose that bluff to the British. Once it was called, at Jutland, the HSF lost its purpose and was essentially idle for the rest of the war. Jutland was interesting as heck, but effectively it only rubber-stamped or made obvious the already-existing calculations of both sides.
Great find.
Ah, that one sailed past in convoy and my lookouts didn’t spot it hiding among the forest of masts.
sharpens boarding pike
I nominated the Glorious First of June, I think. Hands off!
Jutland - 2 votes
Leyte - 2 votes
I’ll reserve my other vote for now.
You’re right -good catch. I’ll put 2 votes towards Jutland instead.
We’re getting off topic (but it’s a fascinating digression). I think the biggest problem with the “risk theory” was that it was based on nineteenth-century British isolationism. In the world of Fashoda and the Great Game, where the British were more worried about threats to the Empire than the balance of power on the Continent, betting that they would not risk crippling losses to their fleet in a confrontation with Germany made relative sense. In the world of 1914, when France, Russia and Japan were British allies and the USA a friendly neutral, the German fleet was the threat to the Empire, so there was no reason not to go all-out to stop it. What Tirpitz failed to realise was the way German naval expansion would undermine the political assumptions underlying his theory.
Frankly, I’d say the HSF lost its purpose in August 1914. Its purpose was political, to give the German Empire a lever on the British - and it shifted them all the way into the anti-German alliance. Once war was declared, the second-best fleet (with no access to the open ocean) had no use, unless the High Command was prepared to risk the lot on the off-chance of an upset success. Jutland showed the Scheer was not, whatever Tirpitz may have thought.
10th Round round:
Jutland - 8
Leyte - 8
These 2 are eliminated.
Others got:
The Yalu - 7
Yeman - 6
Quib Bay - 4
Hansan - 2
Black May - 2
Syracuse - 2
Chesapeake - 2
First of June - 1
Remaining:
Actium - Octavian defeats Mark Antony; takes Roman Empire.
Battle of the Aegates Islands – Rome ends 23-year First Punic War, assumes lasting naval dominance
Aegospotami - Lysander’s destruction of the Athenian navy finished the Athenian Empire.
Black May-when the Western Allies got the upper hand against the u-boats for good.
Chesapeake: French defeat British; Cornwallis doomed
Diu: Portuguese smash the Ottoman/Mamluk/Indian fleet
The Downs - Larger Spanish fleet crushed, rise of Dutch dominance.
Glorious First of June: Decisive British win over French
Gravelins: Spanish Armada turned back by England to meet their famous fate.
Hansan - Brilliant maneuvering leads to key victory in Imjin War.
Lepanto: Ottoman high water (heh) mark
Marmara (677) - Greek Fire stopped the Arabs outside Constantinople - and the Byzantines would roadblock Islam for another 700 years.
The Masts - Arabs/Islam take to the sea and kick Byzantium butt.
Midway: U.S ambushes Japanese fleet
Myeongnyang - Shattered remnants of Korean fleet holds off and smashes a massively larger Japanese invasion fleet.
Pearl Harbor - Japan is allowed to run amok and capture large amounts of territory
The Nile: strategically more important Napoleonic battle than Trafalgar
Quiberon Bay - the cherry on the Year of Victory, it secured control over the Atlantic for Britain and doomed French Canada.
Salamis: Greeks turned back Persian fleet
Sluys - Massive French invasion fleet annihilated, preempting a descent on England.
Second Battle of Syracuse/Sicilian Expedition – Athenian expedition cut off/wiped out.
Trafalgar: Brits won against France/Spain in Nap.war
Tsushima - Japan annihilates the Russian fleet
The Yalu - Japan’s victory was the start of Japanese imperial expansion, and a death blow to the Qing Empire.
Yamen – Mongol-controlled Yuan Dynasty crushed Song Dynasty in China
Eliminated:
Sinking of the Lusitania – One sided, but helped doom the Germans in the big picture.
Kamikazi “divine winds” origin – Mongol invasion of Japan fails due to typhoon
H.L. Hunley sinking the Housatonic - The first submarine to sink an enemy vessel.
Baltimore - AKA the attack on Fort McHenry
Flamborough Head – I have not yet begun to fight!
The sinking of the INS Eilat, 1967 - the first battle vessel sunk using ship-to-ship missiles.
Denmark Strait - The Bismarck and the Prinz Eugen of Germany meet the Prince of Wales and the Hood of Britain.
Hampton Roads: USS Monitor vs. CSS Virginia - first ironclad duel
Operation Dynamo – Evacuation of Dunkirk allowed the Allies to live to fight another day
Bismarck Sea: The Cannae of airpower vs naval power
Sinking of Prince of Wales and Repulse - The blow from which the British Empire never recovered
Cartagena de Indias – British beaten by Spain in Colombia
New Orleans: Farragut captures biggest Confederate city
Falkland Islands in World War 1 seems pretty decisive.
Lake Erie: Perry defeats British fleet; “We have met the enemy…”
Cape Bon ( 468 ) - Vandals destroy combined Roman fleet, nail in the coffin for the Western Empire.
Noryang – Japanese invasions of Korea repelled
Coral Sea – Introduction of aircraft carriers facing each other
The Battle of the Philippine Sea - aka The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot - The USN destroyed the remnants of the IJN carrier force.
Taranto: ascendancy of the airplane over the “fleet in being” (even more notable considering the small, weak, obsolescent air units involved)
Manila Bay – Led to Dewey being given the unique (at least for USA) honor of Admiral of the Navy
Jutland During WWI- Germany effectively neutralized.
Leyte Gulf: Swan song for Imperial Japan
Round 11 due by say 2:00 Central Sunday. (3 days from now).
Hansan - 2 votes
Black May - 2
First of June - 1
Yalu - 2
Second Syracuse - 1
Taranto - 1
Pearl Harbor 1
I’ll adhere to other’s descriptions fo Yalu and Syracuse as posted above. I’ll throw in my votes for the two carrier raids here - pearl harbor, while a spectacular victory was DEEPLY flawed by the failure to sink the US carriers, as Midway would demonstrate not even six months later. The battleships that were sunk or put out of commission can now be seen, with hindsight, as being almost totally inconsequential in the ultimate outcome of the Pacific naval conflict.
EDIT to add: Also the Japanese failure to attack the Pacific Fleet’s fuel depots and repair facilities was just as disastrous as its failure to catch the pacific Fleet’s carriers.
Taranto, also was flawed in that the Royal Navy was never going to knock out the Axis presence in the Med until the Axis land-based airpower was defeated through attrition or transferral to the Eastern front. So while taranto allowed the RN to assure parity with the Italians, it did not in any way decide the outcome of the naval conflict in the Med.
Oh, and I have to state that for me personally, I feel that Black May was at least as important as midway, if not more so, in decisive WW II naval battles. After may '43, the Uboats were never the same threatening force that they were prior to May '43.
Black May was attritional in nature, but so were a lot of battles – nobody dismisses the importance of Stalingrad because it was attritional. Doenitz withdrew the U-boats from the Atlantic after the battle – a stunning admission of defeat for submarines. And over the course of the war the German U-boats suffered a higher proportion of casualties than any other arm of service of any nation in the war – the vast majority of them fatalities – and Black May was the breaking point. Plus the submarine weapon had been Germany’s principal hope of victory over the Western Allies since Goering failed to win the Battle of Britain – this wasn’t a struggle for some salient along a front somewhere, but the “must win” for both Britain and Germany (and the sine qua non for the US to launch D-Day).
I’m not ready to bump it off the list yet.
Again, I’m surprised to see Hansan getting a vote at this point.
Does anyone have a decent source on the Battle of the Masts? Several internet sites have proved even sparser than Wikipedia’s vague assessment (casualties: “heavy”).
My votes will have to be pretty predictable if I am to remain consistent with my recent posts:
Yalu - 1
Yamen - 1
Quiberon Bay - 1
Jutland - 1
Glorious First of June - 1
Jutland’s gone, Sailboat - you have a leftover vote to allocate towards one of the others if you like.
I’ll vote for:
Yalu - 2 votes, don’t think it should still be there
Yamen - 2 votes
Quiberon Bay - 1 vote
I really have to disagree about Pearl Harbor, Wargamer, you’re right that it was deeply flawed in that the Japanese didn’t get American carriers, but Pearl Harbor was decisive in the grander political sense as both an action to start the war with the U.S. and as a propaganda/cultural force that still effects discourse in the U.S. to this day, 70 years later.
Tactically, since the U.S. carriers weren’t in the battle area quickly enough (interesting alternate histories can be constructed around what-if the USS Enterprise had been able to take part in the battle - the only aircraft from Enterprise that fought the Japanese were bombers launched to ferry to Oahu, the fighters Enterprise launched after the attack wound up only being subject to friendly fire), and the Japanese did an impressive amount of damage to the fleet actually present in the battle area, I’d have to say Pearl Harbor was decisive in the short-term favoring the Japanese, and decisive in the long-term favoring the United States and Allies, but I wouldn’t be able to consider it indecisive.
Aha. Of course. I’ll throw that last vote against Yamen, then, to try to catch it up with Yalu.
Yamen - 2
Jutland’s gone, I see, so I have to come up with something else.
I agree with Sailboat about Black May and with wevetsabout Pearl Harbour. Not only was it a smashing tactical victory, and a brutal demonstration of the new superiority of airpower over gunpower, but it was doubly decisive for the Pacific War - it decided that the war would happen and it decided that Japan would lose it.
The only reason for voting for Hansan is the Myeongnyang is arguably even more significant and two Imjin War battles in the top 25 may be stretching it.
Sailboat - I can’t find anything useful about the Battle of the Masts - I suspect that contemporary chroniclers may simply not have written much about it. It seems to have been a bit like the Battle of Sluys - a spectacular tactical victory that amounted to curiously little in the long run. Both are approaching the top of my hit list.
But for my last vote, I’ll go for Chesapeake on the grounds that it was a nothing of a battle, French naval parity did not last, and the British had already lost the land war in North America. Cornwallis evacuates to New York and …?
So:
Yamen : 2
Second Syracuse : 2
Chesapeake : 1
Sticking with:
Hansan – 2
Quiberon Bay – 2
Adding:
Glorious First of June – 1
Wow, the last great battleship action and the largest naval battle in history go out in the same round! Not that I’m arguing though - both were on my list to go eventually. Still it’s quite a sight.
On to my picks:
Sticking with:
Battle of Yamen - 2 votes.
Second Battle of Syracuse/Sicilian Expedition - 2 votes.
Adding:
Glorious First of June - 1 vote - the convoy got through.
I’ve been persuaded to shelve Black May for now.
I heard of Battle of the Masts through Military Quarterly (A fine rag). They don’t have an on-line source. Extremely short version - A desert people who had no experience in naval warfare built a fleet and defeated the primary naval power. They defeated them so bad that because of this battle they lost the entire North African coast allowing Islam to do an end-run into Europe through Spain and it was because of another close call land battle in France that Islam was stopped.
That is pretty significant.
However - what stops it from being a top contender is that Islam was stopped by this same power when they closed for the kill (Marmara - another battle on the list) though the huge damage was done against Byzantium…though one could argue that that shouldn’t affect THIS battle (The Masts) - the results of a future one.
My picks:
Jutland - 2
Yalu - 2
First of June - 1