Thank you for you caring, I have since found a lot on Reddit and the forums of players reporting lost inventory bugs of various kinds for years and the typical solution is the same: take off all your gear before logging because Funcom cannot replace lost items. It’s a shame, I read of people being disappointed with bugs when I first started playing the game and have not experienced any… but now. I like your suggestion of just getting into the habit of taking your equipment off each time, just safer that way. Still scratching my head why my loading screen hangs at 100% indefinitely when this happens, but now that I know it’s a well-known bug (or a derivative of a well-known bug) I can work with it.
Hats off to all who gave advice !