The 1841 LDS edition (the first British edition) replaced the comparative nearer with near. The second printing of the 1852 edition (the third British edition) restored the comparative form, probably by reference to the 1840 edition.
Interestingly, all other places in the text use near rather than nearer to refer to locations adjacent to bodies of water (six times):
So the 1841 change in 1 Nephi 2:5, although probably accidental, is consistent with usage elsewhere in the text. This systematicity suggests that the comparative nearer in 1 Nephi 2:5 might actually be an error for near. Phonetically, there is hardly any difference between near and nearer. The two forms are near homophones, so it is quite possible that Oliver Cowdery (the scribe here in 𝓞) misheard Joseph Smith’s dictation of near as nearer.
Semantically, nearer will work in 1 Nephi 2:5: the comparative seems to imply that Lehi and his family traveled in regions “more or less near” the Red Sea (that is, they kept nearer the Red Sea more often than further away). It should also be noted that the phrase “borders near” as used here in 1 Nephi 2:5 (and in 1 Nephi 2:8 and 1 Nephi 16:14) means ‘regions bordering upon’; in other words, Lehi and his family traveled in the regions that were nearer the Red Sea rather than along a specific line demarcating the boundary between different regions. (See definition 2a under border in the Oxford English Dictionary: ‘the district lying along the edge of a country or territory’.) This interpretation of borders is required in 1 Nephi 16:14 since that passage indicates that “the most fertile parts of the wilderness” were “in the borders near the Red Sea”:
The transmission of the text provides a number of examples of accidental switching between the comparative and the base form of an adjective:
The last example shows that the base form of the adjective can be accidentally changed to the comparative, so we have some general evidence that near could be changed to nearer. Nonetheless, we have no explicit manuscript evidence of any confusion between the adjective near and its comparative form nearer. And since nearer will work here in 1 Nephi 2:5, it is probably safest not to emend the text here to near. For a complete discussion, see comparison of adjectives in volume 3.
Summary: Maintain the use of nearer in 1 Nephi 2:5 since the use of the comparative form in this context can be plausibly interpreted; nonetheless, Oliver Cowdery could have misinterpreted near in Joseph Smith’s dictation as nearer; except for this one case, the text has only near.