The first part of this paper classifies all purely cubic function fields over a finite field of characteristic not equal to 3. In the remainder, we describe a method for computing the fundamental unit and regulator of a purely cubic congruence function field of unit rank 1 and characteristic at least 5. The technique is based on Voronoi's algorithm for generating a chain of successive minima in a multiplicative cubic lattice, which is used for calculating the fundamental unit and regulator of a purely cubic number field.