When they first clapped eyes on one another at a swanky London boat party in 1994, nautical entrepreneur Captain Paul Crowther and his future wife, Caroline, were instantly smitten.
In the months and years that followed came a romantic proposal at The Ivy in London, a lavish church wedding in the shadow of Hever Castle in Kent, the birth of three children and, to cap it all, a burgeoning £10 million ship and private jet-chartering business.
The gilded couple enjoyed the kind of lifestyle — think luxury ski holidays, yacht cruises, private schools, cars, horses and staff, not to mention a £7.5 million estate in the South of France — that most of us can only dream of.
Fast-forward 25 years and having blown their fortune fighting each other in court, the couple’s surname has become a byword for the very worst kind of divorce among the be-wigged occupants of the Family Division of the High Court in London.
‘Nihilistic’ was how one judge put it, as he blasted the pair from Horsham, West Sussex, for failing to compromise and squandering the fortune that should one day have been their children’s inheritance.
So how on earth did a couple blessed with health, happiness and wealth end up ripping one another to shreds in the divorce courts? And who is to blame for the ugly two-year courtroom battle involving unproven claims of fraud and the grounding of a £10 million fleet of ships, which almost wiped out their riches, with £2.3 million spent on legal costs alone?
‘I can’t see how there is anything I could have done to change the course of events over the past two years,’ says 55-year-old Paul in an exclusive interview with the Mail.
The father of five, who has two children from a previous relationship, says he has been left penniless by the case, which ended with a final order made by a judge just days before Christmas. ‘I’ve been dragged by the nose throughout this process. I was simply reacting to claims made against me. The only people who profited were one firm of lawyers; and not mine.’
