Welcome to the forums, MrDrGuy , but I am sorry for your loss and hope we can help you (as a user, not a member of Funcom). As you are probably aware, Funcom will not be available until their next start of business.
Hating to be the bearer if bad news, Funcom does not have the resources to monitor the servers they provide for us and has a standing policy of not returning lost items, again, a resource thing.
Now that we have that out of the way, the usual question that we would be asking would be about mods, but from your well written report, you are on an official server which has no mods. Eliminating that from the equation, the next is a request for you to review your Event Log. You are able to access that by hitting escape from within the game.
You are looking for any red lines that reference the equipment that was lost and letting us and the devs know what the Event Log states as the cause. Decay is a keyword, as is lost stability, and there are others.
If you are able to take a screenshot of those type of events and post them to some public access server, here is how we can get to see them. Since you are a first time poster, there are limitations on posting links, but there is a workaround.
If you will post the link, and alter it so this server does not see it as a link, I can reconstruct it and post the complete link to the screenshot. It will give valuable clues to the issue and will be ready when Funcom starts their normal workday.
The other question that will arise is did you enter the game dead or revived with no gear, and where?
If you could do that, we could have everything ready for their appraisal.
Again, sorry for your loss.
Regards
jim