This is really a question for the Industrial Revolution Age, since during the Age of Sail, superiority was almost always more dependent on the quality of the crew and officers than on ship design.
Two further points: 1) there are some points in time when there is no one ship with a clear superiority over all others; 2) The nuclear age begins to change the comparability equation, with the advent of ships that are now strategic rather than tactical weapons in a way never conceivable before.
1859-1860 The French Navy launches the first ocean-going ironclad, the
Gloire - it likely could have reduced any ship afloat to kindling.
1860-1862 HMS
Warrior (followed by her sister ship, Black Prince). The profusion of American littoral ironclads did not take the title away, but certainly reduced the level of Warrior's superiority
1871-1888 HMS
Devastation-class (2 ships)
1888-1906 HMS Advent of the Admiral-class commences a series of pre-dreadnought battleships with only marginal improvements over each other
1906-1909 HMS
Dreadnought
1909-1914 With the advent of new British, German and American dreadnoughts, the picture becomes less clear until the super dreadnoughts arrive on the scene. At that point, the
Queen Elizabeth class takes the lead, with its 24 knot speed and 15 inch guns - but I would argue that the
Bayern class steals the title, marginally, the following year, since there was really only about a one knot difference under QE's war load, and the Bayerns had better protection and subdivisions, and of course fired better shells. It's a close call, however, especially when you factor in Royal Navy director firing.
After World War I, it's a muddle again. The general assumption seemed to be that HMS
Hood - call it a battlecruiser, call it a fast battleship - was the queen of the seas.Certainly she was the biggest ship, and she was fast; but she also had her protection issues, as we know. Was she more than a match for a Colorado class or Nagato class (especially a reconstructed one)? Certainly her much greater speed would have been an advantage. I think it's a close call, and it's hard to say she's in a Devastation or Dreadnought class of peerlessness in the interwar years.
By World War II, it's even more muddled with the advent of mature aircraft carriers, though this was not clear at first. I agree with
CombinedFleet's conclusion that the Iowa class was the best all-around battleship of World War II, and that they could have taken any other single battleship, even Yamato, in an even match - but of course none had much of a chance against a British, American or Japanese fleet carrier with a topnotch air group. All I'm prepared to say is that the
Midway-class had the most powerful ships by war's end, though that has a lot to do with the planes they flew. Comparing carriers is often as much an exercise in comparing air groups as it is the ships themselves.
That's the situation until the late 1950's, when we see the advent of American supercarriers and ballistic missile submarines. Now you have a new kind of ship, the ballistic missile submarine, that is something new - it's not intended for attacking other ships, but attacking strategic national assets. How do you compare that to another warship? Certainly an SSBN *could* retarget its missiles to attack, say, a carrier group, but that wasn't their real mission. And of course carriers began taking on nuclear gravity bombs themselves, becoming part of the U.S. nuclear SIOP eventually. I give the edge to
Ohio class boomers over the Soviet Typhoons and Boreis.
It's hard to distinguish too heavily between American supercarriers, especially since they were constantly getting upgrades; but perhaps fair to say that the
Nimitz-class has been the preeminent naval combatant since 1977.