Seeing the odds for one, there could be much better chances for success with two, three or more Barges working together. Doing a traderun with 3 Barges and ~200 million SC profit waving allowes considerable bigger numbers of escorts that will most likely even handle bigger and well organized pirat groups.
At some Point the more Barges join, the bigger profit will be because an 15 ship escort army can guard 3 Barges as good as 5.
P.S. In case you want to give that a try, count me in (with a Barge)..