Regaining a decent ship crew is impossible

I recently lost my 4x Tier7 ship crew to a pirate attack.

I tried my best but I died trying to rescue them in the only high level boss fight in the game which has only ONE portal and one attempt possible? (More on that later).

So I'm trying to hire more level 7 ship mates but despite my town being level 8, I'm only getting tier 2 and 3 and the rare tier 4 ship mates in the hiring list.

I've rolled that list about 30 times now and spent an entire week's playtime worth of gold (I have a day job, so please no snide remarks about "skill issues") and not one crew mate above tier 6.

If the town is level 8, I would expect that the minimum level of all hires would start at level 7 minimum. What am I supposed to do with all the level 1 hires in the list? Start another town next door at level 1?

I'm at a loss as to what to do now. I can only ship time cargo holds now and get "rewards" that are incommensurate with the amount of gold and playtime put into to creating the goods in the first place.

Am I supposed to hoard gold for the next month and put another hundred thousand gold into rolling the hire list to maybe luck out and get another 4 Tier 7 or better crew mates?

And lastly why is the pirate fight to rescue crew a one shot only affair? None of the other bosses in the rest of the game are like that.
Even the Uber Bosses give 6 portals. A deviation like this from established mechanics doesn't make sense.